Oh, Hell
by Kitty Gets Loose
Summary: Sebastian and Ciel have tolerated each other for 100 years as demons, but the reappearance of Claude and Alois is a catalyst for change between them. A yaoi dark-ish comedy of sorts set a century after the end of the Season 2 anime.
1. Oh, Hell

**Oh, Hell**

The 1970s were not a good time for Sebastian Michaelis. Awful fashion trends which bred like rabbits turned the mere act of keeping his immortal eyes open into a form of torture. Loud, glittery make-up. Hideous perms. Bell-bottomed trousers. Denim overalls worn even by upper-class women. Ghastly shoes on which every other woman (and a good number of men) tottered. Oversized sunglasses with cheap, zircon-studded plastic frames. Sequins. Ugly corduroy.

He tolerated it all stoically until the day he caught Ciel looking with genuine interest at a pair of seven-inch, rainbow-striped, platform cork wedges in a shop window in Sloane Street. That was when he sat the little devil down for a serious talk about the importance of classic good taste whose aesthetics would stand the test of time rather than be blown about by every breeze of fashion.

"But I was always at the forefront of fashion in the Victorian age," Ciel countered.

"_Victorian_ fashions were pleasing to the eye," Sebastian sniffed.

"These aren't?"

"No."

"Really?"

"European humans dressed pleasingly from about 1400 till about 1914, then fashion went…"

"To hell?" Ciel asked with a disingenuous dollop of innocence.

"We have good taste in hell, as you no doubt remember from the very first time I took you there," the devil replied dryly.

"Then it must have died and gone to heaven," commented the junior demon with a shade too much naivete.

"It simply died," Sebastian pronounced with finality.

The effects of the talk lasted a decade or so, right through Ciel's curious consideration of spandex bodysuits, spangled jeans and psychedelic-print T-shirts. Then one day, at the height of the 1980s, Ciel came home from the shops wearing floppy pink hair, purple eyeliner, a military-style maroon jacket with sequin-encrusted fluorescent trim, and heavily stonewashed grey denim jeans over a pair of pink sneakers. Thanks to the new invention of tinted contact lenses, he no longer kept his right eye with the contract mark covered, and looked every inch a trendy teenager of the Eighties.

Sebastian snapped in the most controlled way possible.

"My lord," he declared sternly to the vaguely Duran Duran-like apparition before him, after inhaling and exhaling a deep breath that his lungs did not actually need. "We are returning to hell."

Ciel Phantomhive might be his immortal little devil of a master, but Sebastian as the senior devil – and a pretty powerful one at that – had always had much more authority in the relationship than either of them would admit.

So back to hell they went in a heartbeat, where the older demon was gratified to find that attire, by and large, remained streamlined, black and sinister. Immortals tended to have timeless dress sense, for they had long accepted the futility of following anything as fleeting as fashion.

"Hmm," was the only sound Ciel made as he surveyed the parade of tight black leather before them.

He turned around without another word, headed directly for the towering maze of tasteful sandstone that was his and Sebastian's private property in the prime district of the netherworld, and disappeared into his bedchamber. When the demon butler to whom he was bound for all eternity tried to ask him if he would like a hot lava cake and a steaming cup of tea of brewed souls to settle his tummy after the trip home, Ciel shut the semi-opaque crystal door rudely in his face.

The older demon was perfectly ready to manage a century-long sulk from his little charge. But what he was not prepared for was for Claude Faustus to pop in through the front door one day, with Alois Trancy or whatever his name was in tow, to ask in his irritatingly stiff manner if Ciel would like to join them on an excursion to Disneyland. Faustus saw fit to add that they were not going there to feast on souls, but for a change of scenery and some good, clean amusement.

"I thought you were dead," Sebastian said flatly to the bespectacled devil, who was casually dressed in human clothing of a dark shirt and trousers.

Devils didn't need eyeglasses to begin with, and _dead_ devils even less so, thought Sebastian. Faustus had obviously only ever worn them while alive to give himself an air of gravitas that he would otherwise have lacked. That he would continue to do so after _dying_ proved how wanting in substance he was.

"Just because a devil _dies_, it doesn't mean he can't come back," Alois piped up boldly, hanging from Claude's arm like a rather gaudy handbag in shades of fuchsia.

"Then you're a devil _ghost_," Sebastian said disapprovingly to Claude, ignoring the blond dead-adolescent-thing who had just spoken.

"Devil ghosts are as solid to other devils as non-dead devils are, so let us keep this exchange civil, Michaelis, lest I stab you with a pitchfork," Claude warned evenly, adjusting his eyeglasses by a fraction of a millimetre.

"Ah, pitchforks," Sebastian remarked coolly. "How nostalgic."

"So what's the difference between a dead devil and a live one?" asked Ciel curiously from behind Sebastian, surprising his senior – for it was the first time he had emerged from his bedroom in weeks.

"Very little," Claude answered, gold eyes softening at sight of the earl. "We stay in limbo for several decades after we die, then things get pieced together again. I was… reconstituted… half a century ago, while you were away from hell. Alois somehow re-emerged along with me, to my delight."

Sebastian wanted to roll his garnet eyes at how fondly Claude was speaking of Alois. He _had_ killed the boy in cold blood, after all, and here he was a hundred years after the fact, so tender with the thing he had murdered.

But Alois was saying something to Ciel now, elaborating on Claude's answer: "It depends on the method of death. That sword-thing down Hannah's gullet was supposed to be a permanent weapon of execution, but she'd spent so many years suppressing its power with her own that it got kind of… rusty?"

Here, Alois looked adoringly up at Claude for confirmation, and the devil nodded with a gentle smile. Like the doting owner of a blond Lhasa Apso that could talk, was the analogy that trotted into Sebastian's mind.

"Where is Hannah?" Ciel asked, again out of curiosity. It was hard to forget the fiendishly powerful demoness who had made him what he was today.

"Hannah and Luka stopped to play at the fire fountain in the plaza. They're both doing great! They got reconstituted along with me and Claude," Alois revealed, visibly pleased to be talking about the female who had done everything she did for the sake of Luka, Alois' little brother. "She and Luka are always happiest at home together, but we've convinced them to go to Disneyland with us this time. So are you coming or not?"

"Yes, I am," Ciel said at once, to Sebastian's astonishment. "I've never been."

"My lord–" Sebastian started to protest.

"It's not like I'll _die_ if I accidentally fall out of a roller coaster," Ciel muttered, voice thick with irony.

"But those two untrustworthy creatures–" Sebastian tried again.

"Can be of no possible harm to Ciel," Alois assured the devil, ignoring the fact that Sebastian was still ignoring him completely. "We can't do anything to Ciel any more, and we don't want to. Even if for some reason we did want to, Hannah wouldn't let us. She's very fond of Ciel."

"We'll bring Ciel home to you safe and well," came Hannah's voice from the doorway, as she had only just caught up with Claude and Alois. She wore a sunny, caftan-like piece that made her look like a suburban housewife. "Isn't that right, Luka?"

"Of course!" laughed Luka, perched on Hannah's hip, his arms round her neck, revelling in her affection. Even an eternity of being lovingly mothered by Hannah would never be too much for this child mysteriously turned demon-being, affectionate and forever babyish as he was.

So off to Disneyland Ciel went with his new old friends – after changing into blue jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt – leaving Sebastian alone to enjoy his perfectly beautiful, utterly tasteful home in peace.

"At last, I have the place to myself," Sebastian sighed once the others had left, allowing his sleekly leather-clad body to sink into his favourite armchair and soak up the silence.

This was what he had wanted for a long time. The place to himself. Without his little master wanting this, that or the other, or sunk in a deep sulk in his room just because he couldn't have it.

He pondered the nature of his link to Ciel. At first, neither of them had known exactly what to expect under Hannah's curse, and behaved much as they had with each other when Ciel was human. Ciel had been as arrogant as ever, lording it over his butler, and Sebastian had catered to his whims. The only thing that seemed really different at the beginning was the demon earl's nasty new habit of gloating over Sebastian's predicament, and Sebastian's unbecoming reaction of resenting the burden with which he had been saddled. He had gone through moments in which he had truly felt that he hated Ciel.

But in the course of living in hell for a while, in alternation with residing in the mortal world for a regular change of view, master and butler had gradually learnt that the Hannah-forged contract was not quite like the contract between human and demon. Ciel did not truly have any all-encompassing power over Sebastian, and Sebastian did not really have to obey Ciel. Instead, it was more like a _responsibility_ – a bond between an elder devil and a younger one – a kind of guardianship, if they could put it that way. They were tied to each other in the way that a guardian would be tied to a ward. Sebastian was obliged to protect and care for Ciel as any senior demon would be obliged to guide a younger one under his care, but he was not under his thumb. All the utterances of "Yes, my lord" and "No, Young Master" were little more than form – and occasional sarcasm – as well as a habit of politeness towards a novice demon who was, after all, noble by birth.

Once they realised the way things worked between them, Sebastian had livened up considerably, ceased hating the young one, and begun behaving just like he had whenever he'd played the role of strict tutor to the living earl. Ciel, on the other hand, had had a good deal of his arrogance and confidence shaken as he learnt just how little he knew about immortal life. He had descended fraction by fraction into a sullen state of being with occasional moments of sarcasm masked by feigned ignorance – truly as if he had finally discovered the art of being a terrible teen.

Sebastian now realised that the obligation binding them could eventually end. Just as Claude and Hannah did not stay dead after dying, he did not necessarily have to remain chained to Ciel, did he? When Ciel became an experienced demon, he could loosen the apron strings. Or ask Hannah to revoke her spell. Or appeal to a council of elder devils to sever the bond.

Sebastian smirked. What an attractive idea it was to be free of the brat in every way. What good was keeping him around if he couldn't eat him? If Claude and Hannah were so fond of him, they could take him and keep him, and play Daddy and Mummy demons to their three little imps. He would let Ciel spend as much time as he wanted with that dysfunctional, somewhat-dead family, and they could have him. Then he, Sebastian, would be relieved of his duties.

He stood up and strolled through the sandstone mansion to Ciel's bedroom, pointed boot-heels clicking a staccato beat on the polished stone flooring. He pushed open the chamber door, glanced around the generous space, and started making plans for utilising the room after the younger one was gone. He could turn it into a nursery to house the race of cats that he was planning to breed selectively over the next three thousand years, until he developed a line of moggies that could thrive in hell. Then he would have cat companions. Lots of cats. Without Ciel giving them sour looks or complaining of phantom allergies.

Sebastian huffed. Allergies indeed. How could the earl still be allergic to cats when he wasn't human any more? Most absurd. Although... his nose _had_ run a little, and his eyes _had_ gone slightly watery in their Paris house twenty-five years ago when he had slept in the bed on which Sebastian had been cuddling a bevy of French feline beauties earlier.

Now, that _was_ strange. Perhaps there was something defective about him. His unusual start to demon life could have left him wanting in certain ways, retaining shades of his mortal vulnerability.

Maybe he _could_ fall out of roller coasters and die.

Sebastian started to stretch his perfectly shaped lips out in a sinister smile, only to have the corners of his mouth freeze before the expression could become an authentically demonic grin. For some reason, the thought of the brat falling out of an amusement park ride and ceasing to exist was not as funny as he had hoped it would be. In fact, it wasn't funny at all. Perhaps the Hannah-imposed obligation was making it impossible for him to find genuine entertainment in the thought.

He experienced a flash of what could only be called _irrational panic_ as a distasteful image shot through his mind: a mangled immortal body splattered on the ground of the Disneyland theme park, waiting to be scooped up into a bag by Claude and toted home to him, neither dead nor alive.

Immediately, he wanted to fly to the amusement park to see that Ciel was safe. But that would be ridiculous. It would look foolish. Besides, the connection between him and the younger one was not alerting him to anything amiss; it would sound warning bells inside him if something bad really happened.

So Sebastian paced the house, checked and double-checked the mark of the contract on the back of his hand for lines gone squiggly, and generally fretted like a worrywart. It was with the utmost self-discipline that he schooled his fine facial features into a semblance of flawless nonchalance hours later, when he finally sensed Ciel's presence within the boundaries of hell. He had returned with Claude, Hannah and the Lhasa Apso siblings, without a hint or whiff of injury.

Not only was there no suggestion of anything wrong with the little demon, but if Sebastian's ears did not deceive him as the group drew closer to the mansion, Ciel sounded happy. The miserable aristocratic child turned deflated sourpuss demon was _chuckling_.

Unable to believe his faultless ears, Sebastian opened the front door of his mansion and stared out at the incredible sight of a smiling Ciel, wearing Mickey Mouse ears, riding high on Claude's shoulders. Alois, in a faux-fur hat with a tail, was yapping away to him while perched in the crook of Claude's left arm. Behind them, a contented looking Luka snuggled deep into Hannah's ample breasts.

The earl's smile vanished as soon as his huge eyes, flashing like a mood ring from blood-red to deep-blue, locked with Sebastian's garnet gaze. Sebastian said nothing, only watched with secret relief as Claude first put Alois down, then reached up and took hold of Ciel under his arms to lift him off the back of his neck. Claude could easily have lowered Ciel directly to the ground, but unnecessarily readjusted the young one in his grip and put one hand under his bottom before setting him on his feet. It triggered an abrupt shot of disapproval through Sebastian's innards.

The earl's guardian was further showered with pinpricks of discontent when Ciel appeared not to notice at all that Claude's hand had made contact with his behind. Those pinpricks exploded into sharp dismay when Alois – right in front of him – said goodbye to Ciel with a huge, wet, sloppy kiss full on the mouth. With tongue. What was most staggering to Sebastian was that Ciel did not seem to object to the smacker in any way whatsoever before mutually ending the contact, waving goodbye to the dysfunctional family, and going indoors.

Sebastian was left to glare at the little group and shut the door stonily behind him. The second that door was closed, he swung around and faced Ciel.

"What was that about?" Sebastian demanded calmly, without raising his voice at all.

"What?" came the uninterested response from beneath those insufferably tacky Mickey Mouse ears.

"The _kiss_."

"Oh, that. Alois fancies me, that's all."

"Alois _fancies_ you?" Sebastian repeated disbelievingly, while a spare section of his brain wondered for the thousandth time how Ciel assimilated modern jargon so readily.

"We always knew that, didn't we?"

"I thought it was Claude he 'fancied'."

"He always had a crush on me too."

"That little tart." The words flew out of Sebastian's normally restrained mouth before he could stop them from rolling off his tongue.

"Oh, getting catty, are we?" Ciel remarked interestedly.

"If I really wanted to get catty, I would ask if the two of you had spent the entire day necking in the spinning Wonderland teacups. And I would ask why in the name of Lucifer you did not appear to object to his manner of showing how he _fancies_ you," Sebastian rumbled.

"Well, I do have to kiss somebody at some point, don't I?" Ciel snapped. "I'm over a hundred and ten years old, and I've never kissed anyone I didn't eat afterwards, so it's about bloody time. And we didn't neck in the stupid _teacups_ – what were you thinking? Of course we made out in front of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves instead."

The little demon earl turned on his heel and stomped upstairs in a perfect teenage pique. Sebastian glided up after him to find the bedroom door shut. He knocked only once and did not bother to wait for an answer before swinging the door open.

"I might also ask about that failure to react to Faustus' hand on your bottom?"

"Like it's the first time I've had my bottom fondled," Ciel muttered, spreading out his Disneyland purchases of colourful T-shirts, badges and a plastic wristwatch on the bed. He had already changed into one of the new tops.

"Luring mortal prey with one's body is a time-honoured tactic employed by devils everywhere. But allowing another devil – even a _dead_ devil – to fondle your behind is something else."

"Is it now?" Ciel cocked his mouse-eared head and flashed a glimmer of ruby-and-sapphire at Sebastian. "How different? Does it allow him to _claim_ me, or something?"

"Perhaps it does."

"So what? I'm starting to think that getting eaten by Claude way back then would have been a hell of a lot more fun than getting stuck with you." If Ciel was playing the part of a rebellious boy of the 1980s, he was doing a very good job with the performance.

"You are no delight to be stuck with yourself, my lord," Sebastian responded frankly.

"Well, neither of us asked to be stuck with each other," Ciel snapped.

"Quite so. But for the present, we are. So at the very least, remove that ridiculous ear-embellished cap from your head and have a serious discussion with me about Faustus and Trancy."

"I like these ears."

"What do you imagine you are? A _mouse demon_?"

Sebastian stretched an arm out to pluck the cap from Ciel's head. But the boy was a devil now, immeasurably quicker than he had been as a child. He nipped away so skilfully that Sebastian was rather impressed despite his annoyance. With great self-control, the elder demon held back from lunging at him, an act that he knew would surely degenerate into the undignified spectacle of chasing the young one around the mansion.

As they faced off, with the cat-loving fiend Sebastian blocking the door and Ciel the mouse-mimicking devil deep inside the room, the guardian-demon suddenly found the whole situation laughable. He tried to contain his amusement with one of his usual smirks, but ended up emitting a rather inelegant snort.

"What's so fucking funny?" Ciel demanded, sounding defensive.

The youngster's vocabulary, Sebastian thought with an inward sigh, had expanded greatly but had hardly improved over the last hundred years. His social skills had also regressed – and social skills were important for a devil. It all meant that he had failed miserably as a tutor. But never mind. Demons took centuries to fully mature. Ciel would be a youngster for quite a while, and he, Sebastian Michaelis, could try to remedy the shortcomings of his charge.

"Your insistence on wearing that cheap headpiece is remarkable," said Sebastian. "You only ever wanted nothing but the very best, but now you want plastic mouse ears?"

"I wanted the best material things as a mortal, because mortals actually need material things to survive," Ciel retorted. "Now that I've achieved my revenge and turned into a devil, and we're stuck in a demon-to-demon contract, I have the right to have a bit of fun without you always trying to keep everything the same!"

"Fun means wearing tacky accessories?"

"Sometimes it does."

"And… wait – let me see if I have the modern terminology right – it also involves 'snogging' Alois Trancy and permitting Claude Faustus to pat your bottom?" the senior devil questioned sardonically.

"I don't see why it shouldn't. In fact, Claude and Alois were surprised that you hadn't already taught me all that stuff. As my guardian, you're supposed to do all that."

"You've been watching movies and television programmes and reading books with plenty of sex scenes in them for decades," Sebastian reminded him. "You are also very practised at luring mortals into hotel rooms. I haven't had to teach you anything."

"Watching movies and reading books about sex isn't the same thing as practising it," Ciel answered. "You also know that when I lure mortals into private chambers, I only let them grope me once or twice before I eat them. _You_ were the one who taught me to be quick about impersonal feeds."

"It is the most practical way to obtain a meal without fuss or investment of time."

"Unlike in a contract."

"Precisely."

"So as we _are_ in a contract, why haven't you invested any time in teaching me what Alois was able to impart a fair amount of in the course of a single earth day?" Ciel asked, fixing Sebastian with his fluctuating, mood-ring stare.

Sebastian looked back at him and replied: "I was under the impression that you would not like to learn such things from me, your erstwhile butler and general dogsbody."

"It would have been better than learning from Alois Trancy exactly how much I didn't know."

"Very well. If you want to learn, I can teach," said the older demon, striding across the room.

He could tell that Ciel was debating whether to dart off again, but the earl settled for staying put. Sebastian reached him, lifted him up by his underarms, and deposited him on the black-crystal table. This was the desk at which the younger one regularly practised demonscript and studied a wide variety of immortal, human and animal languages in order that he might communicate in any tongue with any foe, victim or ally of any species, race and nationality.

"Well? What did Alois do to you that was so new?" Sebastian inquired, studying the little demon's face, framed by the blue cap to which the mouse ears were attached.

"He put his tongue into my mouth," Ciel answered, looking back curiously at Sebastian, lightly kicking his sneaker-shod heels against one leg of the table until Sebastian put his hands on his knees to still that irritating movement.

"In a hundred and eleven years, you have never, until today, tangled tongues with another creature?" the senior devil asked.

"No. Why did you never teach me?"

"You are Ciel Phantomhive, and I am Sebastian Michaelis. Our interactions have always been circumscribed by the roles in which we first came to know each other. I did not think you would welcome a change in our interpersonal dynamics. Neither did I see you as someone I would choose to be intimate with in such ways."

"Not your type?" Ciel queried curtly.

This gave Sebastian pause. He did not really have a "type", come to think of it – besides cats, naturally. Cats were _always_ his type. But other than feline femme fatales, he had the capacity to find many different kinds of creatures attractive. It was a rather broad range that encompassed several species, sexes and ages, but it very certainly excluded Grelle Sutcliff, the AngelAsh abomination, and all dogs. It didn't – he was certain that it didn't – exclude Ciel Phantomhive. It was just that Ciel was Ciel, and had been his little master from the beginning. Sebastian had always been permitted so many liberties with him as his devil butler that going further had never seemed necessary…

"It's too bad if I'm not your type," Ciel was filling in the blanks with his own interpretation of Sebastian's silent, contemplative pause. "It's your job to teach, whether you like it or not."

"Hmm," Sebastian murmured, running his garnet eyes over his ward's features and asking himself why he had never in a century gone beyond pinching and stroking those butter-smooth cheeks. "So… what did Alois do to you today?"

"Should I show you?"

"By all means."

Ciel, still sitting on the desk, reached up with his right hand and cradled Sebastian's head lightly, thumb brushing his cheekbone and little finger only just reaching the nape of his neck. He pulled Sebastian towards him, and craned his own neck to bridge the remaining space between them. Then he touched his slightly parted lips to the older devil's and slipped his tongue delicately into the other's mouth.

Sebastian's lids slid halfway over his eyes as he sampled the taster offered to him. The earl still possessed that distinctive Ciel-scent and flavour, except that it was now spiced with devilishness, making him taste nothing like a mortal meal. Instead, he was like a delicious something else altogether…

They drew a hair's breadth apart, faces remaining very close, eyes hooded. Sebastian spoke lowly, his words fluttering against Ciel's lips: "I see. And where did he do this?"

"On the Space Mountain ride. In the dark."

"What else did he do?" he whispered.

Ciel took Sebastian's hands. He brought the right hand to his waist, slipping the elder one's fingers under his T-shirt. The left hand he drew down to his hips. "He put one hand under my shirt like this and the other on my bottom. Then he kissed me again, somewhere in one of the side lanes between two shops, just after we left the riverboat ride."

"Like this?" Sebastian murmured before pressing his mouth to Ciel's, moulding his lips to his, searching, exploring, tracing the rosebud contours and the tiny fangs, meeting that strangely unskilled but curious tongue, appreciating the complex, aromatic flavour of his essence, and surrendering swiftly to his own newly hatched desire for the youngster.

Ciel kissed back inexpertly but conscientiously, and Sebastian felt the warmth of lust and gratification seeping into him when he heard the young one make a soft, throaty "Mmm...". He pulled the small body closer, the hand under his T-shirt sliding up along his spine to cup the back of his head, knocking the Mickey Mouse cap off onto the desk top.

The light clack of the plastic ears hitting the crystal table roused Ciel from his absorption in the kiss, and the two devils slowly pulled apart, their lips separating with the tiniest of pecking noises.

"Hmm," went Ciel, with the kind of judgemental tone that suddenly made the earlier "Mmm" sound sufficiently ambiguous to Sebastian to make him wonder if he might have misheard that first throaty murmur.

"Well?" he questioned with the barest shade of impatience as his heated arousal warred with the spectre of what threatened to be cold water coming his way, courtesy of his ward. "_Was_ it like that with Alois?"

"Actually..." Ciel began, looking thoughtfully at his guardian-butler.

"Yes?"

"Alois kisses a lot better than you."

Ciel popped the mouse ears back onto his head, slipped out of the hands of a flabbergasted Sebastian, and hopped lightly off the table. He paused in the doorway to look back briefly at the elder devil and add: "I think I'll take my lessons from Alois and Claude instead of you. I'll probably learn a lot better that way."

Leaving Sebastian speechless, the young one strolled out of the room, heading in the general direction of the kitchen, humming something that sounded suspiciously like part of the tune from "It's A Small World After All".

* * *

><p><strong>Note:<strong> I don't anticipate that this story will be a very long one. I'm not likely to take it above a few chapters.

**Warning:** OOCness is nigh-unavoidable in this tale, because the point of it is that it's been nearly 100 years since Ciel turned demon, and they've both changed a good deal in the decades they've reluctantly spent together.

**Names:** I spell characters' names as they are spelt in the English-language Kuroshitsuji manga by Yen Press, and in Square Enix's Kuroshitsuji character guides and other supplementary publications. I respect others' preferences for alternative spellings of character names.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Kuroshitsuji, and make no money or profit from writing this fanfic; Yana Toboso has all the rights to the original manga and anime and the characters in them.


	2. Play Date

**Play Date**

Sebastian eyed the dysfunctional family gathered in his mansion. They were a crime against demonic sartorial taste, he thought, scrutinising the shades of pink that made such an unsightly blotch against the backdrop of his interior décor.

Alois in hot pink. Hannah in pastel pink. Luka in candy-striped pink. Even Claude, the embodiment of dullness, was wearing a tie with a discreet pattern of pink hearts (a death-anniversary present from Alois, he had proudly declared).

Sebastian would never have admitted them to his home had he not decided that Ciel's "play date" with Alois Trancy would be more safely conducted under his own roof than somewhere else, away from his supervision. Faustus, Hannah and Luka had traipsed along, and here they would stay until the Trancy pup went home.

While Hannah and Luka played Monopoly on the silver carpet that was woven out of sirens' hair, and Claude dipped into the game every now and again, the two older youngsters were sprawled on their tummies on the cream-coloured werewolf-skin rug, bonding over music.

"I really like this song too – just a sec," said Alois, sliding a new cassette tape into his Walkman, rewinding a bit and depressing the "Play" button. The moving parts of the cassette tape revolved, visible through the transparent window of the battery-operated device. When it reached the right part, Alois slipped his headphones over Ciel's ears. It was a good thing that Ciel had finally grown tired of the Mickey Mouse lugs and stuffed them away into a drawer, or there would have been an unfortunate clash of headgear at this stage.

Ciel nodded in recognition once the song began. "I've heard this a couple of times before, and I like it too. Depeche Mode, right? From their latest album?" he asked.

"Yeah. 'A Question Of Lust' – the best among the lot of this release, in my opinion," Alois replied.

Ciel played the entire song through, returned the headphones to Alois, and said: "It's great. But I like the b-side of 'Stripped' better – I've heard it on radio a few times, and I think it's called 'But Not Tonight'?"

Alois nodded. "I've got the 'Stripped' single. I can tape the b-side for you so you can listen to it any time. Do you have a Walkman?"

Ciel's fluctuatingly blue eyes darted to settle briefly on Sebastian before he answered: "Yes. He finally allowed me to buy one six months ago. I'll have to persuade him to magic up more batteries for it, though – either that, or let me go into the mortal world to buy them. I haven't mastered the spells for materialising things out of nowhere like he can so easily do, and it's a bloody pain asking him to do things when he's in a sarky mood."

"I've got batteries. Claude made me a whole bunch last week. I'll send some over."

Every word of this, naturally, could be perfectly easily overheard by Sebastian, who was ostensibly deeply engrossed in a glossy coffee table book entitled "The Most Glamorous Domestic Cats in Europe". One perfect eyebrow twitched microscopically, in vague irritation that Ciel would even discuss such things with the Trancy tart.

"Thanks, that's nice of you," Ciel murmured, as he glanced through the folds of the lyrics insert that had come with the Depeche Mode album.

"It's easy to be nice to you," Alois cooed, making Sebastian feel nauseated. But not quite as nauseated as when he leaned over and licked Ciel on the cheek.

"That tickles!" Ciel chuckled, pushing him away.

"Of course it does," Alois grinned, and did it again.

Even as Sebastian ran through his mental checklist of cleansing spells for something that would remove all traces of demon-ghost spit without damaging velvety-soft demon cheeks, Alois took the next step of pressing his mouth to Ciel's, nibbling gently and playfully at his lips, making appreciative humming noises as he tasted him. He tried to roll Ciel over onto his back and climb on top of him, but he had been a demon in this current physical form for only fifty years while Ciel had been one for almost twice that time. So the earl was stronger, and he flipped Alois over onto _his_ back instead.

Alois, however, was extremely sexually opportunistic, and managed to surprise Ciel by nuzzling, licking and generally molesting his tender neck with his mouth, nibbling gently at that erogenous zone like a dog submissively pleasing a stronger pack member.

Ciel gasped, moaned a bit, and turned pink in the cheeks – a pink to match the little hearts on Faustus' necktie.

This was among the things that novice demons were expected to do on approved meetings under the supervision of their elders – explore one another and hone their softer skills in a variety of contexts. Sebastian not only knew this perfectly well, but had even gone through such sessions himself as a junior devil. Still, his eyes narrowed and glowed as he pretended not to watch his young master roll in the werewolf rug with the blond slut. Possessiveness lent him creativity, and within half a minute, he had mentally crafted a very good recipe for Lhasa Apso Kebabs.

"If you know the right spots to aim for, it's easier to seduce your prey, and potential mates too," Alois chuckled softly, working his way up to Ciel's smooth jawline. "That's just one of the things you should learn as a predator."

_Stir-fried Diced Lhasa Apso with Red Peppers..._

"It smoothes the process," Claude added, studying the two youngsters keenly from where he sat on the Chesterfield sofa, which Ciel had insisted on bringing in, as the crystal couch Sebastian preferred the look of was too uncomfortable for him. "There is a time for violence and enjoying the screams of agony, but when one needs to be discreet, seduction is always a useful technique. You have been a devil for nearly twice as long as Alois has. Your guardian ought to have thoroughly schooled you in such things."

_Roasted Spider Legs..._

"Sebastian and I aren't really each other's type," Ciel muttered.

"Naturally," Claude agreed, unnecessarily tweaking his spectacles by a fraction of an inch to demonstrate that he was shifting his glance to the other mature male devil. "Michaelis has forgotten how to seduce anything other than cats."

_Sashimi of Spider Skinned Alive..._

"Well, _we're_ here to teach Ciel now," Alois said cheerfully to Claude, turning his submissive posture beneath the earl into a position of strength as he slid down his body, undid one of Ciel's shirt buttons with his teeth, pushed the fabric aside with his mouth, and traced a wet circle around a tender pink nipple with his tongue.

"Mmmm..." Ciel moaned, with infinitely more pleasure than when Sebastian had kissed him on his desk.

"I know lots," Alois murmured against Ciel's chest. "And Claude can cover the bits I'm not so good at."

_Stew of Lhasa Apso with Potatoes, Carrots & Onions... _

"Like ears," said the blond imp. "He's good with ears."

"I'm sure Faustus is excellent at infecting ears with mites," Sebastian remarked dryly from behind the book.

"No, silly," Alois snorted, wriggling out from under Ciel and helping Ciel to his feet before taking his hand and pulling him over to Claude. "He's good at teasing ears. No matter how I do it, I always feel like I'm drowning his ears in a pool of drool when I lick and nibble them, but he's got it down to an art. Go on, Claude – show Ciel."

_Spit-roasted Lhasa Apso with Chilli of Spider... Boiled Lhasa Apso with Spider Relish... Bloody Carcass of Giant Spider with Minced Lhasa Apso Stuffing!_

Claude did tip his head to Sebastian in a gesture of asking permission to touch his ward before laying hands on Ciel, but Sebastian was too busy jamming new recipes into his imaginary Dog-and-Arachnid themed cookbook to nod in response. Faustus regarded his silence as consent, and took Ciel's right hand before pressing a kiss to the backs of those delicate fingers.

Sebastian could no longer pretend to be salivating over the full-colour, full-page picture of the gorgeous, prize-winning British Blue with amber eyes who was posing saucily on a white sheepskin rug. He lowered the coffee table book and glared as Claude wrapped his hands around Ciel's waist and drew the demon earl onto his lap.

To give Ciel credit, the little fellow was giving Claude a doubtful look, silently questioning if his skills were all they were being advertised as. But when Claude nuzzled his cheek, then followed up by tracing the curves and hollows of Ciel's right ear with his tongue, the earl turned a deeper shade of pink and closed his eyes, barely noticing that Claude's right hand had slid down his waist to his hips, and was now caressing his derriere.

Instead of being jealous, Alois appeared to be thrilled, whispering into Ciel's unoccupied ear: "D'you like that? He's good, isn't he?"

Ciel made a mewing sort of noise that Sebastian had never heard him make as a human or demon, shivered a little under Claude's tongue and hands, and finally opened his scarlet-sapphire eyes to say: "Let me try doing that."

Then to Sebastian's utter dismay, Ciel tilted his head up and stuck his tongue into Claude's ear.

_Steamed-alive Spider with Hand-wrung Lhasa Apso Juice!_

Sebastian snapped the glossy coffee table book shut a little more loudly than was necessary, distracting the others momentarily. He put the book on the small table beside his armchair, rose to his feet and stalked into the kitchen, where he began tinkering pointlessly with various ingredients and condiments.

He rather petulantly clanged and banged crockery about for several minutes before Hannah's voice sounded from the kitchen doorway: "I'm sure I don't know of any other homes in hell with a kitchen."

"The young master likes having human food on a regular basis," Sebastian told her, using his very best "I've-answered-your-question-so-go-away-now" voice.

"Does he?" Hannah asked in surprise. "I thought my spell made him a pure devil."

"It did," Sebastian stated, noticing that "the voice" wasn't working on her.

"Oh. Then why..."

"For the first few years, he touched no mortal food or drink. However, he eventually redeveloped his interest in sweets."

"What an interesting demon he has become," she murmured, tipping her dignified, beautiful, silver-tressed head to one side in a manner that male demons seeking a female mate would generally find most alluring – unless, like Sebastian, they had been wronged by her and felt far more inclined to stab her with a steak knife or ten. Which would undoubtedly be a futile act, taking into account that she was a bloody consummate sword-swallower.

He found it unnecessary to reply to her remark, so he kept quiet and continued cutting up carrots, picturing Claude's fingers in their place.

"You may find this hard to believe," Hannah spoke earnestly, her azure eyes shining. "But my heart – the heart I wasn't supposed to have as a demon – went out to Ciel from the moment I laid eyes on him. He and Luka and Alois were all so similar in the unhappiness and pain they had suffered in life. I agreed to work the spell I did only when Alois and I came to an understanding that it would be for Ciel's ultimate good, whatever the outcome of your duel with Claude. I wanted him to be safe from eternal destruction, safe from harm, protected by the devil who would be powerful enough to slay the other. I had no plans to make you suffer either – I gave you guardianship over him; I did not enslave you to him."

"I imagine that you think I ought to thank you," Sebastian remarked. "But I will not. I do not believe that brat has been pleased with his lot for a day since he became a devil."

"Well, isn't it your role to guide him so that he discovers how being a devil may suit him immensely for all time?"

"Ah, and I suppose _you_ imagine that you are playing the role of Auntie Agony?" Sebastian asked with a cold smile.

"If necessary," Hannah answered simply.

"Then do be so kind as to dispense some advice to Faustus about not going too far with another demon's ward."

"Perhaps the demon who does not want his ward seeking guidance from other devils should satisfy him enough so that he does not look elsewhere," said Hannah sensibly, before turning away from the kitchen and leaving Sebastian to the only-partially satisfying activity of mutilating the Faustus-finger carrots.

When he had vented enough of his irritation by chopping up more orange roots than would be needed for a week's worth of carrot cake, he left the kitchen and returned to the living room to be greeted by the sight of Ciel reclining on the sofa, wrapped in Alois' arms, as they played their music and shared headphones. Ciel's cheeks were still rather pink, unsurprisingly, as Claude had removed his shoes and socks for him, and was kissing his right foot.

Sebastian had gathered sufficient information here and there from Ciel over the years to learn that Claude had once tenderly kissed his foot while attending to his grooming in the Trancy residence nearly a century ago. He had also gathered that Ciel had been disgusted enough at the time to kick Claude halfway across the bedroom. Of course the child had not had the physical strength at the time to kick a devil across a room – what a hilarious thought. Obviously, Faustus had been such a masochist that he had been _waiting_ for that imperious kick, received it with joy, and gone rolling all over the bloody floor in uncontainable bliss.

Idiot spider.

Unfortunately, Ciel seemed disinclined to deal him another kick – it would have a bit more real impact now that the earl was a devil rather than a fragile boy. On the other hand, his giving Claude some authentic physical pain would probably leave him wriggling in pure excitement not only all over the floor, but up the walls as well. Sebastian wasn't keen on the idea of Faustus leaving any happy-webby residue on every surface of his home, so maybe it was good that Ciel wasn't lashing out at him.

"Such a delicate ankle – such a slender foot," Claude was murmuring, like a creepy Prince Charming feeling up Cinderella's leg before letting her try on the glass slipper.

"He's got nice hands too," Alois commented, putting Ciel's fingers into his mouth.

Ciel playfully nibbled on Alois' fingers in return, grinning cheekily. Sebastian had _never_ seen him behaving like this. He seemed determined to provoke him by being happy and full of grins and chuckles with his friends, while remaining utterly sullen when alone with him.

Typical of the brat. Just typical.

Sebastian cleared his throat before the scene on the Chesterfield could spiral into a full-blown _ménage a trois_. Three pairs of eyes glared at him, but Hannah scooped a sleepy Luka off the carpet and said to her companions: "It's time we were going. Luka wants his nap, and Ciel will learn better a little at a time."

The visitors gathered their stuff and moved towards the door. Hannah kissed Ciel on his left cheek and Luka on his right, Claude lifted his fingers to his lips again, and Alois said goodbye with another slobbery, tongue-filled smooch. They thanked Sebastian for his hospitality, and then they were gone.

"You need a bath," Sebastian stated briskly once the front door was closed.

"I do?" Ciel asked doubtfully. He loved baths, but his demon body cleansed itself, and Sebastian had declared washing largely unnecessary. So soaking his body in warm water had been a less frequent activity in the past decades than he would have liked.

"Yes, you do," Sebastian said firmly, his vision crawling with images of spider-demon super-germs and dog mega-bacteria.

"Sure," Ciel shrugged. A bath in hell was always nice – the gorgeous tub in this mansion was carved from a single, solid piece of rock from a volcano in one of the valleys of the netherworld. It kept the heat in very effectively.

Other than preparing the water with an easy spell, Sebastian no longer attended to Ciel in the bathroom, as he was more than old enough to wash himself. It had been about eighty years since the older devil had entered the room while the younger was soaking in the tub. So Ciel was surprised when Sebastian knocked once on the bathroom door, and entered with a washcloth and a bottle of Marks & Spencer Forest Fern bath gel – Ciel's current favourite.

"Shall I scrub your back for you, Young Master?" the guardian asked, mysteriously back in full butler mode.

"Why would you want to do that?" the younger demon inquired suspiciously.

"Don't you miss being attended to during your baths?"

"Uhm... not really."

"It's only because you haven't had me serve you during your baths for so long that you've forgotten how pleasant you used to find it," said Sebastian confidently, pouring some of the gel onto the washcloth and getting to work on Ciel's back, buffing up a good lather.

From his back, however, Sebastian quickly moved along to his face, and was soon scrubbing away enthusiastically at the earl's cheeks, ears and neck, which had been molested by the visitors. Ciel eyed him curiously throughout, mostly in silence, until Sebastian tried to make him open his mouth so he could scrub his tongue with the washcloth.

"What the hell–!" Ciel made a muffled protest at last, wiping bubbles off his lips. "What's wrong with you? This is almost as bad as when you ran me a bath for the very first time after we'd met and you almost boiled me alive in the tub!"

"My apologies," Sebastian murmured politely. "I thought you would like to get the taste of Alois Trancy's tongue and fingers, and Faustus' ear, out of your mouth."

"Their taste is fine with me."

"Ah. My misunderstanding."

Ciel grumbled and lay all the way back under the water so that Sebastian couldn't easily get at his mouth, and stuck his feet out of the tub instead. He expelled from his lungs the air he no longer needed in order to live, so that he might recline comfortably right at the bottom without bobbing up. There, he relaxed and simply watched Sebastian out of his huge, opaline eyes, flashing from deep blue to blood red and even green as the water played with the light reflecting off the polished inner surface of the bath.

Presented with the earl's feet, Sebastian took what he could get and continued scrubbing away with the washcloth. He took especial care with the areas Faustus had caressed and kissed, until Ciel's feet were purely redolent of bath gel and young-demon deliciousness. The scent was inviting, and in a second, Sebastian had pressed a kiss to Ciel's foot.

The earl locked eyes with Sebastian through the water, pushed his head and shoulders to the surface, and glared at him from behind a sopping wet fringe.

"What in the name of all the netherworlds do you imagine you are doing?" the younger of the two demanded, with a distinct overtone of his old haughtiness.

"Oh, don't you like this?" Sebastian asked with as much wide-eyed faux-innocence as Ciel had been dishing out to him for decades. "I got the impression that you were very pleased with Faustus lavishing all his spidery attention on your twinkly little toes. I thought you would welcome more of the same from me."

He gave the sole of Ciel's foot a long lick from heel to toe, and the earl tried to tug his foot away, but failed.

"Hey, let go, you idiot," the junior one snarled, lashing out at him with his other foot.

Sebastian caught the attacking foot and tipped both the youngster's legs up so that his upper body fell right back into the water.

"_So_…" Sebastian began, both brightly and a tad sharply. "You once kicked Claude away from you when you were human because he kissed your delicate little foot. Now, you let him smooch and slaver all over you, while trying to kick _me_ away? Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not as masochistic as he is, and won't be rolling all over the floor in a tizzy just because of a little flick from you."

"Fuck off!" Ciel yelled from under the water – and very well he did it too, as the words bubbled through the surface with the greatest clarity.

"You're not enjoying this?" Sebastian asked, laving the tops of those slender feet – first the left, then the right – with his tongue, catlike.

Ciel flung water at Sebastian using his hands and sat right up, his head breaking the surface of the water. As a human, he had had virtually no abdominal muscles worth speaking of, but his demon body was quite flexible. So he forced his upper body back out of the tub to hiss ferociously at his guardian – only to have his mouth captured in a cheeky kiss as Sebastian let go of his feet and grabbed his head instead.

Ciel growled into the kiss, generating an odd utterance that came out sounding like: "Hmmmrrrrrggghhh!"

Sebastian had sense enough to work out that this was not a sound of pleasure. He pulled back but kept a firm hold on Ciel's head, eyeballed the youngster, and asked calmly: "Is this not to your liking?"

Ciel, picking up on his calm tone and feeling the steely grip on his skull, replied bitingly: "No."

"Truly? After cavorting all over the rug and sofa with Alois and Faustus, you _genuinely_ don't like this? Someone is being less than honest here, and it's not me."

The earl took a slow, deep breath to steady and still himself rather than because he needed air. It was one of the many little tactics Sebastian had imparted to him in preparation for circumstances in which he was faced with danger from more powerful immortal beings.

"Fine," Ciel conceded after a few moments. "It's not _un_pleasant."

"I thought not," Sebastian said smugly. "Are you still going to insist on taking your lessons from the spider and his panting sidekick, or will you be sensible and take them from me?"

"Look," Ciel huffed, suddenly sounding very grown-up and logical. "We established ages ago that we weren't happy to be stuck with each other, so I don't think the environment we've created over the past ninety-something years is one that would be conducive to my learning this sort of thing."

Sebastian had been pretty self-satisfied while he was taking the superior position as the mentally mature, physically stronger one who was easily outmanoeuvring the other in every way. But now that Ciel was being logical, it seemed highly immature in contrast to sound overly smug. He thus found himself having to backpedal, attitude-wise, and reply sensibly in return: "It's hard to be absolutely certain until we've given it a proper go, wouldn't you say?"

"I don't know about that…"

"You barely tried to be serious about kissing me last week."

"I object to that statement. I was very serious about analysing it," Ciel declared firmly.

"Perhaps you were too analytical about it."

"Was not."

"Let's try it again."

"We tried it then and it just didn't work."

"The first time is never the best."

"Hmm. I doubt there will be an improvement merely because I'm naked and in the tub," Ciel scowled.

"It surely can't be worse."

"All right, all right," the earl grumbled, sitting upright in the tub. "Let's get it over with so I can enjoy what's left of the hot water in peace – and in _private_."

Sebastian leaned over towards him, senses on alert just in case the brat was planning to do something like dunk him in the bathwater. But the earl did not seem to be planning any such childish move. He appeared perfectly intent on connecting for another kiss, to explore how things would go from there. The fact that he was taking it seriously gave Sebastian an unexpected attack of performance anxiety, and the senior devil felt himself shiver a little as he tasted his ward's mouth for the second time in the space of an earth week. But why be anxious? He, Sebastian Michaelis, was damned good at this – he had successfully seduced countless demons, women, men, girls, boys and cats in the course of many millennia. His failure rate was virtually nil, with only one bad-tempered circus tigress who had played _exceptionally_ hard to get.

Therefore, with growing confidence, he drew Ciel's pouty lower lip into his mouth, nibbled him a little, pulled him closer, let their tongues wrestle each other, and pushed deep into the kiss, expecting any moment now to hear an approving murmur like one of the many he had so liberally given Alois and Claude all afternoon. His sleek leather trousers were really starting to feel uncomfortably tight...

And then he heard it – the same old, dreaded, judgemental "Hmm."

He moved to break the kiss to ask what the hell was wrong this time, but Ciel held on to him and reattached his lips to his in another very serious kiss, then another, and yet another, till Sebastian could practically taste the youngster's frustration – as if he was mining his guardian's mouth for something he couldn't find.

At last, Ciel detached from him, stared hard at him, and told him bluntly: "It's just not working for me."

Scrambling to regain his psychological balance, Sebastian hit back by saying: "I think those creatures in pink are ruining your normal demon senses. I would advise no further play dates with the tart and his pimp."

_Dog and Spider Yin Yang Soup._

Ciel's grown-up attitude vanished in a flash as he snapped at Sebastian: "Don't insult my friends just because they're fucking superior to you in some ways!"

"_Friends?_" Sebastian snorted disbelievingly.

The earl stood up in the tub in a temper, giving the elder devil a glorious view of his delicately perfect, dripping-wet nakedness, before snatching a towel off the rack and stomping off to his bedroom, where he slammed the door with a mansion-rattling bang that heralded another long sulk.

_Damn it_, Sebastian hissed inwardly. _Damn, damn, damn._

The bloody trousers weren't feeling any looser either.

_Braised Lhasa Apso Shank with Spider-innard Sauce._


	3. Sweet Torment

**Important note – please read: **On 27 Jan 2012 (in my time zone), two days after putting up Chapter 2, I received an angry PM accusing me of stealing this story from another fic. I was stunned, as I had never read that fic before receiving the PM and going over to look at it.

I explained to the PM writer that I had never read the story. As I found upon opening it that it was very long (over 50 chapters), I could not skim even a third of it then to discover if any parts deep inside were similar to mine. However, the chapters I skimmed (and others I have since checked) do not in my opinion resemble my current fic, besides hell as a setting (surely a common setting for Kuroshitsuji fics), a flamboyant Alois Trancy propositioning Ciel (also very typical in Kuro fics), and references to specially-bred cats (this was pure coincidence; but in her fic, she elaborates on it in detail and even has one of the said cats as a talking character; I made my reference purely based on Sebastian's well-known love of cats, and had no plans to develop that "breeding programme" further in my story).

I told the PM writer that I would tack an urgent author's note about this matter to the end of my second chapter to explain to readers what was going on, so they could judge for themselves. I put up the note as promised. I also informed the PM writer that I would repeat the note in Chapter 3, as most readers wouldn't see a note added later to a chapter they had already read.

Now, however, I have removed the author's note from the second chapter, and am putting up a version of it here without public references to the story and author in question. I am doing this because I understand from various sources that the author is already fighting numerous battles with other people who have been offended by her for all sorts of reasons involving doujins, fics and defamation. Also, just last night, I spotted a statement on her profile page that she has had a family member receive death threats from members of this site.

Death threats are unacceptable to me. Though my note was purely meant to allow readers to compare the fics, in a case such as hers where she is already facing serious real-life problems, I don't want to risk even tangentially adding to those problems by directing further attention to her. So I will not name her or her fic in this public note. I will simply repeat the key statements I made in my original note:

- I do **not** steal other fanfic writers' stories or ideas. I write everything I write from what is in my heart and mind. Whenever I happen to encounter stories with ideas similar to those I'm toying with, I go out of my way to avoid echoing them when I start writing. If by chance things I write are similar to stories I have not seen, that is accidental. The body of work I have built up speaks for itself. I am _not_ a thief.

- I had never read that particular fic or anything else by that author before receiving the PM, to the best of my knowledge, and I have not stolen from any of her fanfics, or anyone else's fanfics. In fact, I don't read many fanfics as I'm too busy writing.

- When fanfic writers draw from the same original source material, their stories are bound to have similar elements and ideas (like devils and hell in Kuroshitsuji fics) – but the way these elements are expressed will differ distinctly with each writer's unique style. I may borrow Yana Toboso's characters and elements for my stories, but I work them my own way. I don't poach from other fanfic writers. At the end of the anime's Season Two, Sebastian and Ciel leaped into hell, and when planning this story, I projected that end forward by about a century into the 1980s, imagining events and interactions that would be darkly humorous more than anything else, as I was burnt out on all the angst in Devilish Impulses. I did not go about stealing ideas from other fics.

- If my _regular_ readers, whom I trust, tell me that they believe I have stolen another story, I will be happy to take my story down, because I never like to think I might be "copying" someone else, nor would I like those who enjoy my stories to think that either. Those who want to compare the two fics can PM me; I will direct them there on condition that they do _not_ harass the other author.

Thank you for reading this note.

* * *

><p><strong>Warning: <strong>Citrusy stuff and strong language ahead. Please do not read this chapter if such things are not to your taste.

* * *

><p><strong>Sweet Torment<strong>

The brat had sniffed out the tiramisu.

It was the dessert Sebastian had made for him yesterday to entice him out of his bedroom. He had purchased fine ingredients from the mortal world and assembled them with care, for he had scheduled an important lesson on demon etiquette that day. But the bait had failed.

It was rare for such bait to fall flat. When Ciel first became a demon, he had initially lost his taste for human food – including his beloved sweets. However, some years into his new existence, his love for dessert and assorted special dishes had resurfaced. At the time, they had not yet explored the true nature of their contract, and the butler had grudgingly made the sweets while the earl luxuriated in the other's unhappiness.

But even after they realised how little power Ciel really had over him, Sebastian had continued to make dishes he asked for, because – Hannah be cursed – he actually _wanted_ to provide for the youngster.

This time, he had voluntarily made the tiramisu after Ciel had barricaded himself in his room for three days, in an attempt to shorten the sulking period with minimal fuss. He kept thinking about the taste of the young devil, so tantalising, so haunting, he could almost savour it on his tongue…

But the ingrate had not bothered to answer when he'd knocked on his door a day ago to tell him that the sweet was ready, all nice and chilled inside the magical cooling box that worked a sight better than most human-made refrigerators. No, not a word from within.

Then Alois dropped in, chaperoned by Claude, and Ciel had immediately come out of his room without any fuss.

"Lots of batteries for your Walkman," Alois had announced chirpily in the doorway of the main entrance. "And a recording of But Not Tonight. Also, a tape of this new band's album – Please, by the Pet Shop Boys. They're not bad."

"Thanks, I'll give them a listen," Ciel answered, allowing Alois to kiss him on the mouth.

Sebastian, watching hawklike from several feet behind him, heard that distinct purr of approval from Ciel again: "Mmm."

"We have to go, but we'll see you soon," Alois whispered, keeping one cautious eye on Sebastian.

He and Claude left, after which Ciel strolled insouciantly into the kitchen to home in on the tiramisu, ignoring Sebastian. With a huge slice of the sweet spilling over from a small dessert plate, he picked up his Walkman and headed for the library with the cassette tapes.

The elder devil glowered from beyond the open doorway of the library. Not a word of thanks to him for making the treat. Not so much as a single acknowledgement of his presence. This despite Sebastian's continuing accommodation of his regular demands for this dish or that. Surely he gave in far too much to the young one…

His internal rant screeched to halt, and a groan escaped him as he saw Ciel – seated in a chair by the desk, wearing his headphones and enjoying the music – sticking out his little tongue to lick and lick and _lick_ the fork clean of every bit of mascarpone cheese, espresso-and-brandy-and-marsala-wine-soaked sponge, and cocoa dusting coating it. After a bit, Ciel even removed the headphones to focus completely on the dessert.

Damn the _brat_. Damn the unexpectedly _delicious_ brat. The _taste_ of him…

That very moment, Sebastian painfully re-suffered a lesson he had once learnt as a junior demon but had almost forgotten until very recently. The lesson was that skintight black leather was pure hell over a hard-on. Especially a maddeningly fluctuating erection like this, waxing with each thought about the young one's scent, taste and feel, and flagging with each echo of the little devil's cutting rejection of him.

Male demons were no less prone to the inconvenience that could be caused by unbidden arousal than human men were. Sebastian found himself inflamed – and alone – outside the room while the brat feasted on sweets he did not need for his survival.

The older demon was tempted to deal with the problem himself right there and then, but he could not accept that he, Sebastian Michaelis, could ever be reduced to jerking off outside the library over Ciel Phantomhive.

So he willed his tumescent appendage into submission and forced himself to stalk into the room with as natural a gait as he usually had while wearing his killer heels.

"Enjoying that?" he asked with feigned disinterest, casually walking over to one of the shelves to inspect the spines of a miscellany of books.

"Mmm…" Ciel practically moaned in a manner suggesting that he was infinitely more excited by the dessert than he had been by his mentor's previous kisses. It instantly provoked a raising of both Sebastian's hackles and that bit of his anatomy undergoing torture inside his leather trousers.

The senior devil whipped around to glare at the younger one, ready to find that the imp was taking the mickey and taunting him in the most calculated way imaginable. But the glare evaporated and morphed into a disbelieving stare when he realised from the look of genuine bliss on Ciel's face, and his scant awareness of his guardian's presence, that he was not taunting him. He really wasn't. He was _truly_ more aroused by the tiramisu than he had been by Sebastian three days ago – and the week before that.

Sebastian's hard-on and self-esteem both flagged dramatically. He managed, however, to temper his voice when he spoke again so as not to sound too bitter: "You appear to be even more aroused by it than by Trancy's petting."

"Hmm... no, making out with Alois is still a tad more interesting than this tiramisu," Ciel murmured, concentrating on the taste and not really caring for a conversation with his guardian at this moment in time. To prove how little he cared for a conversation, he popped the headphones back over his head.

"And the tiramisu is more interesting than _me_," Sebastian spoke rhetorically, the pointed remark packed with more danger than a Molotov cocktail. He knew that Ciel could hear him perfectly well through the music, as the little devil had very sharp ears.

Ciel appeared to become aware for the first time that his guardian might be, to put it mildly, _upset_ about the way their previous kissing attempts had gone.

"Oh," the younger demon uttered, sliding the headphones half-off his ears, spending a brief pause thinking quickly about whether there was any tactful way out of this, before concluding that there was none. "Well, sort of."

The silence following the confirmation that Sebastian's advances had been about two degrees less exciting than Alois Trancy's, and marginally less interesting than a sponge-and-cream-cheese dessert, was deafening.

Ciel finally broke that silence by adopting an irritatingly superior, know-it-all voice as he suggested: "Maybe you're just out of practice. Alois and Claude have been making love to each other for the last fifty years, since they regained their physical forms. Whereas you... when _was_ the last time you stuck your tongue down the throat of someone you weren't having for supper?"

"I wonder whose fault that might be," Sebastian grumbled. "I've spent every day of these last hundred years training you how to thrive as a devil."

"I fail to see how that's my fault. You didn't have to arrange my lessons the way you did. You could have taught me the arts of seduction while practising them yourself. Claude showed Alois all that himself, in full detail. Claude, in fact, is puzzled about why you've chosen to keep me so relatively sexually naive all this time. Any particular reason, Sebastian?" He cocked his head, tipping the headphones off centre.

"Just because Faustus is saddled with an oversexed lapdog who's been panting to get into his knickers since 1889, it does not mean that other devils with apprentices to nurture should teach their juniors how to behave like rent boys."

"Or maybe you just don't have the requisite _skills_," Ciel taunted cheekily, unkindly.

It was the straw that broke the spine of Sebastian's patience.

The junior demon was suddenly reminded of how far he had to go in his development when he found himself knocked backwards along with his chair and away from the desk before he even noticed that Sebastian had so much as _moved_. The headphones flew off, the cake plate shattered against one of the bookcases, and the fork tinkled to rest amongst the porcelain fragments.

The thinking part of Sebastian's mind noted that he had instinctively put one hand behind Ciel's head to cushion it from impact against the ground, even while equally strong instincts had prompted him to tackle the youngster hard, knowing that as a demon, Ciel could handle this kind of assault and more. In many ways, he was still protecting him like he had when he was a human boy.

"Aaaaaarrrgh!" Ciel snarled after the initial shock faded, fighting against having his right wrist pinned to the floor by Sebastian. He clawed at the other devil with his left hand, but this was swiftly captured too when Sebastian slipped his right hand out from behind his head – now, why had he bothered to shield his skull like that? – to secure Ciel's left wrist. The little one was many times stronger than he had been as a mortal boy, but he was nowhere close to being a match for his elder.

"Perhaps," Sebastian growled. "I have never exhibited such skills to you, or applied them _to_ you, because whether you are human or demon, I continue to perceive you as my young charge – the _delicate_ young master who would have been greatly offended by such things – the _fragile_ young master I have never considered in the light of one who would arouse my interest. At least not until now."

The earl became acutely aware that he was virtually immobilised. His frame was still moulded to the chair although it, like him, was lying on its back. His legs remained bent at a ninety-degree angle over the edge of the seat, except that he could barely move them without breaking the chair. He struggled, but Sebastian was straddling his shins, trapping his legs between his thighs and groin.

Ciel made a quick move with the intent of using his calves to shatter the rungs joining the chair legs, so that he would then be able to swing his shins up sharply and give Sebastian's balls something to remember this day by. But the older demon anticipated his move, tucked his long body in on itself like a contortionist, and lifted his left knee close enough to his own chest to be able to kick his foot back against the seat of the chair right between Ciel's knees. The whole chair bumped and skidded away from under the earl, through the desk legs and across the library floor. Ciel was now held down against the floor by Sebastian, who was lying full-length on top of him, imprisoning his arms, torso and legs.

In their early years together as demons, every disagreement between them had been studded with haughty demands of "How dare you?" and "I command you!" from Ciel. But with time and discovery, the haughtiness had faded, and the high-handed orders had given way to alternative strategies from the young one. Like sulking, rebelling, and – as his demon body grew far nimbler than his human one – actual physical _scampering_ to worm out of situations, like when Sebastian had tried to snatch the Mickey Mouse cap from him before.

But it had never come to this – this raw, furious, animalistic struggling against the older devil. Even their latest spat in the bathroom had been nothing like this. They had never come to literal blows, and Sebastian had never before got quite so furiously _physical_ with his ward outside of an emergency, like when they scuffled with Shinigami or unfriendly demons.

Despite the earl's enraged opposition, Sebastian easily drew Ciel's arms together so that he could wrap the long, powerful fingers of his right hand around both those wrists to keep them immobile against the floor. With his left hand now free, he seized Ciel's chin to still his thrashing head.

"My lord," Sebastian said sternly, while keeping a perfectly serene smile on his beautiful face. "Stop thrashing about like a senseless beast, or you will hurt yourself. You may be a demon, but even for a demon, knocking one's head repeatedly against the floor does not produce any benefit whatsoever, and in fact can feel rather unpleasant."

"You never wanted me to be your eternal responsibility!" Ciel roared into his face, ignoring the stern tone of voice and continuing to fight him. "You didn't want me here with you like this, and I didn't ask to be stuck with you, so don't pretend for one fucking moment that you care what I think of your fucking _skills_!"

"Your language leaves a lot to be desired, and so does your self-control, though you seem to be progressing well with _double entendre_," Sebastian rumbled above him, trying hard to preserve his own control as the squirming little body beneath him drew interesting responses from that troublesome length of demon flesh inside his skintight trousers. "What a dreadful lowering of those towering standards you held yourself to as a mortal noble. You had so much dignity and self-command in those days..."

"I'm not a fucking mortal noble any more, you piece of immortal shit!" Ciel bellowed, leaving a fine spray of saliva all over Sebastian's face.

"How much you have changed, Young Master," the senior devil observed out loud for the first time what he had often thought, since Ciel's transformation into a non-human.

"You think _you_ haven't changed?" yelled the earl. "You've changed _horribly_ since I became a demon. You're not Sebastian any more!"

"I still answer to the name of Sebastian, do I not?" the elder countered with a tight, fangy grin, doing his utmost to stifle his erection. "I've grown rather accustomed to being addressed by it. I shall probably keep the name for as long as it amuses me. And I have not changed much – you only think I have because you can no longer order me about as you please."

"I put up with you before only because you obeyed my every bloody command!" Ciel yelled. "What good is a damn cur that doesn't obey?"

"I likewise am beginning to question what good an apprentice is if he doesn't want to learn. I should really screen the books and movies I allow you to watch – you sound positively common these days…"

"Why the hell should I learn that kind of shit from an ancient demon with less sex appeal than _mascarpone cheese_?"

"Mascarpone cheese?" Sebastian growled dangerously, deeply offended, although the smile on his face remained in place.

"The cheese does a hell of a lot more for me than you do!" Ciel yelled, somewhat unfairly, considering how much Sebastian had done for him all these decades.

"Oh, really?" Sebastian demanded. "Would mascarpone cheese do _this_?"

He removed his left hand from Ciel's chin and, with a little manoeuvring, slipped it between the little devil's legs.

Ciel went scarlet in the face and exploded: "You fucking molesting paedophile!"

"How can I be a paedophile when you are a hundred and eleven years old?" Sebastian asked, most reasonably, as he cupped his hand to the younger one's crotch and found almost instant gratification in the way his ward's denim-covered prick immediately _leaped_ under his palm.

An enraged Ciel's eyes blazed when he realised that his body was responding to Sebastian, apparently answering to its own will, and he hissed furiously at the other devil: "I'd rather hump the cheese!" But the effect of his ire was significantly diminished by the whimper that attached itself to the tail-end of the word "cheese", followed in short order by a failure to stop himself from gasping: "Aaahhhh…_hhnnng…_" when Sebastian sliced through the denim with a sharp onyx claw and wrapped his hand firmly around the earl's member, which hardened with remarkable rapidity.

"Oh, _would_ you now, Young Master? Is that what you've been doing while out of my sight? Performing unspeakable acts with various items of food before eating them?" Sebastian inquired, voice pitched low, stroking the youngster's cock, discovering with some surprise as he asked the question that he really wanted to hear the answer.

"None of your fucking businesssss… aaaaaahhh…"

"As a pure demon, do you really desire sweets and Alois Trancy so very much?"

"A bloody sight more than _you_, you piece of scum… mmmgggh...!"

"You have no desire whatsoever to learn from me?"

"Nnno – _dammit_, no!"

"Did you truly _want_ Alois to touch you this way?"

"Rather him than you any time – _mmmmgh_ – you perverted creep!"

"Ah, I must reject that offensive label at once, my lord," Sebastian murmured calmly. "As you very correctly said, it is my duty as your demon mentor to provide instruction in such matters, instead of leaving them to Lhasa Apsos and four-eyed spiders."

"Lassa _what?_" Ciel gasped deliriously, unable any longer to distinguish his struggles to free himself from his helpless writhing under Sebastian.

"For someone who claims to be fond of dogs, you do not know as much as you ought to about canine breeds," Sebastian remarked, mustering all his resources of self-control to keep his tone perfectly level although the bucking motions beneath his hips and hand were nudging him to the edge. _Damn this corset-like leather…_

"Screw you," Ciel managed to choke out before he dissolved again into incoherent moans.

"If you like, we can do that later," the elder devil retorted.

From between his arms, still held down to the floor, Ciel shook his head furiously.

"No?" Sebastian smiled. "Well then, we can do something else. It's a good thing we washed you three days ago, after the spider and the Lhasa Apso fondled you all over, because I'm about to put you in my mouth."

"_W-What?_" Ciel stuttered in panic, ruby-sapphire eyes flung wide open, trying to lift his head and not succeeding too well.

Right then, Sebastian released his wrists. Ciel tensed every muscle in his body to jump free, only to fall back again with a cry that merged equal parts of sexual urgency and utter fury into a single note when the devil above him sheathed his throbbing cock with his mouth in a clean, smooth, impossibly swift move, like warm buttercream flowing over him.

Exploring with his mouth, Sebastian found Ciel's prick of a regular, decent size, exactly as he expected, considering that the brat had been an adolescent boy when he had been turned into a demon – and he very much liked the feel of him between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The older one hardly needed to hold the youngster down any more except by the hips, to modulate his thrusts, which sought sweet friction between Sebastian's tongue and the roof of his mouth. The more experienced demon was pleased to provide that desired friction, and to enhance the snugness of the fit further by narrowing his oral cavity. _Ohhh, the taste of him... even better than he would have been as food... and how eager, with these juvenile motions and cries, aiming for the back of his throat without mercy..._ How arousing, but so unrefined!

Sebastian gripped the younger devil's hips more firmly, restricting the wild movements while he himself moved his head up and down the shaft, working his tongue and lips skilfully, treating the earl to sensations of a quality he had never experienced. Ciel surrendered to the rapture, arching his back and neck, crying out like a bitch in heat, finally even fisting his hands in Sebastian's raven hair to keep that head and mouth exactly where he needed... _hhhhhhhaaaaaahhhhhh..._

An alto-pitched moan burst from Ciel's mouth just as the demon-seed spurted from his cock and flowed down Sebastian's throat. _Perfect, perfect taste – why did he ever think he might have wanted to _eat_ the child? This was so much better..._

The once-resentful, now rather pleased guardian of the little devil let that delicious, gradually softening member slip out of his mouth before he made his way on his elbows up along Ciel's limp body. Keeping his weight on his own arms, he studied the face of the young immortal under him, cheeks flushed, eyes closed, lips parted just a little, panting slightly. Almost cherubic, Sebastian would have said, except that it would be laughably inappropriate to compare devils to cherubs.

To the best of his knowledge and experience, it was exceedingly rare for devils to pass out, except in the event of extreme injury in the course of demon warfare, or in circumstances involving powerful magic. Heavy petting hardly counted as an extreme circumstance. Yet, Ciel appeared to be as passed out as a demon could be, very nearly unconscious, apparently on the brink of falling asleep.

"You really must improve your powers of endurance, my lord," Sebastian commented complacently enough, before realising that his own hard-on was, if possible, harder than ever, and that he currently had it pressed against Ciel's right thigh.

The earl's mood-ring eyes peeled open, the changeable colours of the irises gleaming out at Sebastian with an emotion that was hard to decipher.

"Well, Young Master," Sebastian murmured smugly. "_That_ is how it feels to be pleasured by someone who is skilled enough to know what he is doing."

He ran his fingers through Ciel's soft-black hair, neatening the mussed-up bits, tidying his fringe. His fingertips then trailed along the youngster's face, tracing the contours of his forehead, the line of his nose, his pinchable cheeks, the rosebud lips, the pale column of his throat. What a beautiful creature he was, Sebastian thought, seeing him with fresh eyes after so many years of dismissing him as a brat. He was like nothing else in hell.

"If I have not taught you such things till now, it is because I believed that you would not require these techniques for some time to come, as I would be here to protect you," Sebastian said as he stroked the little devil's cheek, and Ciel's eyelids opened a smidgen more. "But these are useful skills to develop, as you are showing interest in widening your social circle. You may enter situations and places where I will not be present to guide you. The ability to seduce and make love expertly to another being is essential for a devil who may eventually make a contract with a mortal and have to pleasure his human master or mistress. It is also vital for a young demon like yourself, who may need to placate powerful devils who would destroy you if you are unprotected in their presence simply because they can, unless they see some other purpose for keeping you in existence."

Ciel remained silent, fixing Sebastian with his vivid eyes of contrasting hues. The glare sharpened significantly when the devil on top shifted slightly, pushing his erection higher up the earl's thigh.

"You will also _want_ such skills eventually, when you grow bigger. I know that you think you will remain in this physical form forever, as you have not grown so much as an inch in a century. But most novice devils who become strong and powerful enough do grow in the course of several centuries – including physically."

Ciel looked as if he was paying attention to this part of Sebastian's speech, but not much else.

"So, did you like it, Young Master?" asked the elder as he caressed his cheek, posing a direct question with the aim of obtaining a verbal answer.

Still, Ciel said nothing.

"I think you did," Sebastian stated when the answer did not come. "Now, shall we try those kisses again, the ones we experimented with before you dismissed me as unskilled and uninteresting? Perhaps you will like them better this time."

Sebastian lowered his face to Ciel's, ready to press his lips to his ward's, only to be stopped by Ciel planting his hands against his shoulders.

For a few seconds, they looked at each other, the smaller one glaring and the tall one gazing down in self-satisfied fashion. Then the ruby-sapphire irises of the earl glittered ferociously like the eyes of an animal catching the glow from the headlights of a passing car, and the eyelids with their pretty, lush lashes narrowed with intent. A mere fraction of a second before the older devil could fully decipher that look, Ciel snapped his head up and cracked his brow viciously against Sebastian's forehead, executing a flawless headbutt which nearly had his guardian seeing stars.

As Sebastian reeled – more in surprise than real pain – Ciel hissed and clawed his way out from under him like a cat scrabbling out from beneath the jaws of a large dog. The demon earl sprinted upstairs and slammed his bedroom door with every sign of intending to stay in there for millennia to come.

Sebastian blinked once as he looked around the library, sighed, and lay back on the floor after casually magicking the shattered plate back into one piece and clearing away every scrap of the cocoa powder, cream cheese and sponge-finger crumbs – which Ciel's latest gesture seemed to confirm were all far more erotic than him.

Perhaps, thought the devil, he would after all be reduced to jerking off in solitude over the brat.

How very far he had come down in the world.


	4. Change Of Scene

**Change Of Scene**

_Bastard molester._

Ciel scowled as he flipped through the rack of fluffy bedroom slippers at BhS along Oxford Street. He found a pair in his size, priced at only three quid and ninety-nine pence, in a cute dog design complete with pink tongue hanging out and ears that flapped. This was the design Sebastian was sure to hate the most, so he bought it.

_Killjoy creep._

Down the busy shopping street he walked to the Benetton store, where he unearthed the most cheerful, multi-coloured lambswool jumper he could find, and bought that too for twenty-four pounds, confident that Sebastian would least approve of this eye-catching pattern.

_Pervert._

Next, he popped into a Sock Shop and gazed at the wild designs all around him. They had socks with rainbow fruit on them, gaudy chinoiserie cartoons, sheep, cats, flowers and everything loud. Just the sort of thing he had been trying to wear as a rebellious statement for the past two decades against Sebastian's eternal aesthetic of black and muted hues. Yes, Sebastian would hate the socks on sight. He picked out three of the brightest designs – the psychedelic flowers, the rainbow fruits, and one of the chinoiserie patterns which was a quirky mix of Oriental fans and piglets dressed in brocade-patterned robes.

He paid for them and stepped back out into the street. The socks were small enough to be stuffed into his satchel, so he put them away, but all the other carrier bags had to be slung over his shoulders or arms or held in his hands. One would never have guessed it from the numerous purchases he was toting, but Ciel Phantomhive was not truly in the mood for shopping. He had never liked London in the summer. Yet, he had left one hell only to decide to surface in this other hell of an over-crowded retail mecca packed with tourists, pickpockets and summer-sale bargain hunters, with a wallet full of cash and no genuine interest in anything he had bought.

Just so he could be away for a while from the bastard he was stuck with.

"Arsehole," he muttered angrily to himself, ire rising again at the memory of yesterday's encounter in the library. While he _was_ angry with the older devil, he was more furious with himself – the thought of how he had whined and moaned and clutched Sebastian's hair to keep his mouth right _there_ was burning two fiery red spots into his cheeks.

The humiliation had prompted him to slip out of the mansion this morning and escape hell for a breather. Novice devils could not leave without permission from their guardians, but he still had the permit Claude had obtained from Sebastian for the Disneyland outing. At the end of the excursion, Claude thought Sebastian had nullified the magically worked authorisation; Sebastian assumed that the gatekeepers had taken it back from Claude. It helped that they were not really on speaking terms – and Ciel simply said nothing about the permit being in his pocket.

It meant that he had been able to transport himself out of hell this morning without attracting Sebastian's notice. While their contract technically meant that Sebastian always knew where he was, their reluctant association with each other these ninety-seven years past had resulted in the senior devil largely blocking out awareness of his location, except when Ciel was in real danger and called for him.

With any luck, he wouldn't notice he was missing yet. That would give him more time alone, in a busy place distracting enough to keep his thoughts off Sebastian's mouth, Sebastian's hands, Sebastian's body...

_Bastard._

After buying so many things he did not really want, he unexpectedly spied something he did. Near where Regent Street joined Oxford Street was a fruit seller operating out of a cart stall. Ciel crossed the road to the stall and ran his eyes over the sweet, ripe summer fruit. The blackberries looked particularly tempting. He wanted the very best among them, and he would sniff them out with his sharp little nose.

"Only a quid for a punnet, lad," the seller said, laughing when this customer, who looked every bit like a beautiful teenaged boy, started picking up the perforated plastic containers one after the other to sniff them. "They're all the same, top quality stuff – y'can't smell a whole lot through that plastic, anyway!"

"Yes, I can," Ciel stated. "They're _not_ all the same. I want this punnet."

"One quid's a great price for a pack like that," the seller grinned. "Y'wont find a better price 'tween here and Charing Cross Road."

The blackberries could have cost five hundred times that for all Ciel cared; he had the money. He only cared about the quality of the fruit. It was purely a bonus that the price was ridiculously low – as it often was in summer, when local berries ripened in such numbers that growers pushed stock as hard as they could before it rotted. He dug about the pockets of his jeans for a pound coin, and handed it to the man before walking away with his purchase.

Money was no object. He had always had wealth – as a human and as a devil. Sebastian had shown him how their magical powers could create impeccable documents of birth, education, finance and even medical histories, so they could have mortal identities which could be replaced with new ones every eighty years or so. Doing this allowed demons to operate in the modern world as if they were ordinary humans, giving them convenient base identities to work from whenever they needed to reside amongst mortals for moderate periods of time.

It also allowed them to retain the mortal-world assets they wished to keep. A piece of freehold property, for instance, could be purchased by a devil using one identity, then willed through normal legal means to his next identity once the first had reached the end of what would be an unsuspicious age at which a human being might pass away. Devils had no real interest in material things. However, in this age where everything was recorded and shared amongst government, law-enforcement and legal entities worldwide, a devil who wished to traffic with mortals needed to establish some material foundation in order to operate more easily in the guise of a human being.

Ciel had identities galore, numerous pieces of prime property, and very impressive bank balances. But out of that vast store of wealth, all it had needed was one pound to purchase this little carton of genuine pleasure. He pried the punnet open and ate a berry, savouring the perfect ripeness of the flesh and sweet juices that burst over his tongue.

He slipped into one of the side roads off Oxford Street and sat down to eat the berries, resting on the steps leading up to an office that was closed as it was the weekend. He wondered if he should visit the Phantomhive manor after this. The property had reverted to the crown upon the disappearance and eventual presumed death of the last Earl of Phantomhive – himself – and had become the sort of place that people paid to enter on conducted tours.

Ciel had done that in recent years – paid a fee to a guide to be shown around his _own home._ Even now, he lacked the words to fully convey in any language how incredibly sad and stupid an experience that was. Still, he did it occasionally, when Sebastian agreed to accompany him. He could have just materialised somewhere inside the manor to skulk around like an intruder, but he paid to visit, because he just wanted to walk in through the front door _like a human being_, the way he had for the first thirteen years of his life.

But no, he wouldn't visit the manor today. He would keep shopping for things that he knew Sebastian would loathe, because being obliged to set his eyes on items he regarded as eyesores was nothing less than the killjoy bastard deserved.

He ate the berries, then shoved the plastic container into the Benetton bag – rubbish bins were hard to find in this part of London, and he didn't want to use any magic that might draw attention from other immortals. He was just turning back into Oxford Street to pop into Selfridges for a look at the latest hat collections when he sensed something that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

At once, he knew he had made a mistake coming out here on his own.

_This_ was why novice devils were not let out of hell without their guardians' authorisation. Hell was a natural environment for demons; everyone knew their place and bounds of conduct. Devils in the mortal world, however, were by and large beyond the supervision and judgement of other devils. Some lived here because they liked dwelling among humans, and were extremely civilised towards mortals (until they selected one to devour). But if they scented another devil they had no existing pact with, they might attack him or her for reasons ranging from territorial infringement to sheer bloodlust if they thought they could get away with it. Even if they were in a contract with a mortal, with rules to govern them, such rules usually didn't cover their conduct towards other devils.

This was also why Sebastian usually accompanied Ciel everywhere in the mortal world, save when they were in Sebastian's own territory, or within the network of city areas claimed by devils they were on cooperative terms with.

An unprotected novice demon like Ciel, out of his guardian's area of control, was an easy victim for devils who were not on friendly terms with them – and it felt like one of them had sniffed him out.

If he called for Sebastian, he would arrive at once. The hostile devil would back off when he saw that the novice he was targeting had a powerful protector. But Ciel was still angry with his guardian and with himself, so he ignored that sensible option. Instead, he decided to handle this on his own. He nipped out of the area at top speed, causing a couple of people near him to wonder where the beautiful, dark-haired boy they had just seen had vanished to.

Sprinting in the direction of Hyde Park, he moved too fast to be visible to human eyes. His ultimate aim was Belgravia, where he still owned the damned town house he had owned as a human. This was private property – not something bestowed on the Phantomhives by the royal family – so he had retained possession of it through some cunning creation of a new identity after his "death", and an "old will" that Sebastian had arranged for lawyers to dig up.

Because the town house was his and Sebastian's, that part of Belgravia was marked among demons familiar with London as Sebastian Michaelis' territory. No devil would touch him within that territory unless he wanted to make an enemy of Sebastian for the rest of eternity.

Unfortunately, the demon coming after him was fast – too fast for him to outstrip before he could reach safe ground. By the time he made one end of Hyde Park, he knew he would not be able to outrun his pursuer. So he dropped his shopping bags to the ground and whipped around to face the strange demon, who emanated waves of unfriendly intent. A few people were in this part of the park, but no one paid them any attention.

"I happen to have a bad case of the munchies, little imp, and you look like you'll make a nice meal," said the demon, who was in the guise of a slender mortal man in his thirties or thereabouts, dressed in a highly fashionable but not very tasteful mustard-yellow suit. "I don't scent a protector in the vicinity either, which makes you legitimate prey."

Ciel was afraid, but covered it up with a sneer: "I thought you were some fearsome beast worth running from, but it appears you're only a muzzled fop who's too stupid to stipulate proper feeding terms in his contract with his human master."

"A brave taunt, but I smell your fear," the predatory demon grinned.

"I smell something unpleasant too, but I don't think it's coming from _me_," Ciel snapped.

"Keep talking, little one – I'll like the feel of you yelping away inside my belly – makes everything nice and ticklish for a bit."

"If you think I'm going to be an easy meal, think again," Ciel warned. "I'll cheerfully claw my way out from inside you."

"You might be able to do that if I were an ordinary devil," the yellow-clad one chuckled. "Alas for you, I'm not quite so ordinary. I'm a Devourer."

Ciel blanched. Among the lessons Sebastian had given him about demonkind had been a few concerning Devourers – devils who specialised in feeding on weaker demons to boost their own power. Devils were hard to kill, and one who crudely tried to swallow another – or even a portion of another – might as well get ready to have his innards ripped apart from the inside. Devourers, though, were different. They were generally weak compared with most devils, but they had the ability to draw the essence out of a young and unskilled demon the way any demon might draw the soul out of a human. The empty husk of the victim whose immortal vitality had been thus sucked out would crumble away into nothing.

He _shouldn't_ have come out here on his own.

He would have to call for Sebastian after all, and face the humiliation of being rescued by the one under whom he had been writhing shamelessly just yesterday. Well, there was no help for it.

He opened his mouth to summon him, but the name wouldn't come off his tongue. He urgently tried to _think_ the name – just _thinking_ with the intent of summoning him was enough – he would come. But he realised something was very wrong when his mind felt numb, incapable of bringing a single thought into focus.

"Little imps like you who slip away from home eventually scream for their protectors when they can't run any further," the other devil laughed. "That's why I use a spell which not only paralyses your tongue, but also confounds your mind so you can't thought-summon anyone."

All that went through Ciel's head was confusion and vague thoughts going in useless circles. One of the flailing ideas that was _trying_ desperately to form in his brain was that panic alone was all right, because Sebastian would _sense_ that very panic and come to him immediately.

Except... other floundering thoughts trying to assume a shape in his swimming head were that it would take time for this kind of spell-scrambled panic to reach him, and it would be too late, because the predator in the mustard-yellow suit was already right in front of him, reaching a hand out to draw him close to take his very existence away –

Suddenly, the cloud of befuddlement snapped when the spell was abruptly broken by an intervening flash of black which snatched him to safety and sent the mustard devil staggering backwards into the park.

His first returning coherent thought was that Sebastian had made it in time. But when he glanced up at the one who had him in his arms, he saw that it was Claude Faustus.

"Claude!" he gasped.

"Fortunately, Alois heard five minutes ago from the gatekeepers that you left hell alone this morning," Claude murmured, his attention mainly on the opponent in yellow a few feet away from them. "He told me at once, and I came up here to track you down. Coming here by yourself was not a clever thing to do, Ciel."

Ever since Disneyland, Claude had called him "Ciel" in the most natural manner, and Ciel had not objected. After all, Faustus was no longer the devil who had usurped Sebastian's place and pretended to be his butler for a time, but a fellow demon. And Ciel could tell that Claude and Alois really enjoyed being with him. Being with them was so different from being merely _tolerated_ by Sebastian that to his surprise, Ciel had found himself liking them right back, from that very first excursion.

Therefore, he swallowed his pride – something he would never have done with Sebastian – and said humbly: "I'm sorry."

"You _should_ be sorry, for your own sake," Claude said. "But I'm not angry with you now that you're all right. I know you will learn from this experience."

Claude shifted Ciel onto his left arm and strode towards the Devourer, who started to move away when he felt the power that Claude was unleashing to show his strength. The predator knew at once that _this_ devil was not one to be trifled with, and turned to escape, only to find his way blocked by the appearance of another strong devil.

Sebastian.

"You tried to make a meal out of my ward," Sebastian sighed in exasperation, eyeing the Devourer. He had sensed Ciel's distress once the spell dissipated, and rushed into the mortal world at once.

"In my defence, I didn't know he was yours," the other devil replied with a nervous grin.

"Go anywhere near him again, and I will shred you so finely that you won't re-compose yourself before London is fifty feet deep in the sea."

"Understood. Goodbye."

The mustard-suited demon fled, leaving the other three together.

"Call yourself a guardian," Claude remarked to Sebastian, smoothly and bitingly.

"You didn't return the gatekeeper the permit I issued," came Sebastian's cold rejoinder.

"It was your responsibility to confirm with the gatekeeper that it had been returned," Claude retorted.

"If _somebody_ had not kept quiet about the permit being with him, none of this would have happened," Sebastian commented, looking pointedly at Ciel.

"Ciel is a young devil who has been over-sheltered," Claude told Sebastian sternly. "It is only natural for him to try pulling such stunts. Your responsibility is to keep a close eye on him."

"I can assure you that he will not be out of my sight or take so much as one step out of the house for the next hundred years," Sebastian rumbled forbiddingly, glaring at the earl.

Ciel went paler than his usual shade of pale. Claude noticed at once and countered Sebastian's threat with a trump card of his own: "You will do no such thing. I am taking charge of Ciel until he chooses to return to you. I hereby exercise my right to claim a novice whose guardian has let him out of his sphere of protection, and who has been rescued by me."

Sebastian's glare shifted to Claude, garnet eyes hardening. Mature demons had the right to claim novice devils they had saved from danger, if those novices had been abandoned by their guardians, or if their guardians had failed to save them. He knew it, but had not thought Claude would act on that right, considering that Ciel had only slipped away and had not been discarded.

Sebastian shifted his eyes back to Ciel, and asked: "Is that what you want?"

The final decision rested with the novice, who could choose to return to his guardian if he did not want to go with his rescuer.

Faced with a choice between possibly being locked up by Sebastian for the next century, and taking his chances with Claude, Alois and Hannah, Ciel plumped for Claude.

"I'm going with Claude," he declared.

Sebastian could not believe it. This was like losing the earl to Faustus all over again, except that there was no deception this time, no brainwashing, no underhanded replacement of one child with another. Everything was honourable and above-board, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it unless Ciel changed his mind.

"You never wanted me around, anyway," Ciel muttered to Sebastian. "You only wanted to eat me, and I was willing to be eaten except things didn't turn out that way. Now you can be rid of me."

Having obtained confirmation that Ciel would go with him, Claude bowed formally to Sebastian before vanishing back into hell with the earl.

Sebastian fumed silently at the corner of Hyde Park for a good ten minutes and contemplated wrecking the park to vent his anger, but thought better of it when he scented cats around and realised they might get hurt if he destroyed the surroundings.

He glared at all the shopping bags the brat had strewn around, and felt like setting them on fire, or leaving them to be picked up by bag ladies. But his nose caught the lingering scent of blackberries, and he spotted the empty pack in the Benetton paper carrier. It brought home the awareness that Ciel had certain unusual desires and needs that he had always superficially fulfilled, without really understanding them.

Pondering this, he picked up all the bags and returned to his home in the netherworld – without his ward, but with a load of shopping he couldn't understand why any devil would want.

…

"Ciel!" Alois cried, throwing himself at his friend the second he and Claude stepped into the house.

"Are you all right?" Hannah asked worriedly, hugging the earl and looking him over. "There are all kinds of predatory demons up there..."

"Baaaad demons," Luka intoned soberly. As if there were really any other kinds amongst the bunch of soul-stealing, mortal-devouring, despair-stoking creatures they were.

"I'm all right, thank you," Ciel replied politely. "Claude came for me in time."

"Ciel will be living with us for as long as he wants to," Claude announced.

Alois yipped in delight, smothered Ciel in a huge embrace, and covered him with wet kisses. Ciel had been in a foul mood up till now, and had thought he would remain wary and grumpy for a bit while assessing Claude's household dynamics. But Alois' licks and kisses were just so damn _ticklish_ that he couldn't help it: he started chuckling, and immediately felt a lot better.

"Hey, cool Sock Shop socks!" Alois exclaimed when he noticed the brightly coloured items sticking out of Ciel's satchel.

"You, Luka and I can have one pair each," Ciel said at once, pleased to have something to share with the other two junior ones.

Luka chose the psychedelic flowers, Alois pounced on the Oriental pigs, and Ciel was happy with the bright fruit. They put them on at once and tumbled about in a tangle of slender limbs and colourful clothes on Hannah's bed. Ciel already felt right at home.

…

Sebastian hoped the brat was miserable. He rather pettily hoped that Faustus was so creepily kissing all the way up Ciel's leg from his foot to his thigh that he would flee the house within the next minute.

But no distress signals came.

By evening, Sebastian had stalked about his empty mansion more times than he wanted to count, a large, restless, sleek black cat looking for something to do.

He had tidied the living room although there was nothing untidy about it to begin with. He had straightened Ciel's room and decided that the space would _not_ make a suitable nursery for cats, after all. He had discarded the perishable food that only the brat would eat. He had arranged every book in the library by subject, then in the alphabetical order of each of the languages they were written in, then by height, then by the colour of their spines – and none of the arrangements had pleased him. Now, he was back in Ciel's bedroom, looking through the shopping bags, inspecting the music collection, and opening the wardrobe to scoff at the little devil's choice of T-shirts with bright graphic designs, denim jeans and colourful jumpers. He had not approved the purchase of half the items here, yet they filled the wardrobe.

With a huff, he took some of the bright-hued garments out to put into a box that he would send off to Faustus' place so that they would be out of his house and with the young master to whom they belonged.

But as he looked through Ciel's possessions, it struck him how diametrically opposed the earl's tastes were now from when he had been human. _Doggy bedroom slippers with waggling ears?_ Ciel had started out with classic good taste and a mature outlook as the Earl of Phantomhive. Then he had turned demon and regressed into a childish rebel who made questionable fashion choices. When and why had this happened? Had he handled the little noble incorrectly?

_Why did the brat go home with the disgusting spider?_

For the first time in ninety-seven years, Sebastian began to ask himself if he should have studied who Ciel was becoming rather than marching his ward along the path he had determined he should walk, and ignoring the colourful little ways Ciel had been hitting back at him.

Perhaps there was a loud, multi-hued message somewhere in there that he had missed.

…

Alois smelt nice, thought Ciel. Maybe it was a demon thing. When he'd been human, he had thought the Trancy boy over-perfumed and reeking of an unhealthy interest in sex. But now that they were devils – or devils of a kind, at least – he perceived his old foe and new ally as possessed of an intriguing sort of scent. It was particularly evident as they snuggled up together under the covers of Claude's bed – Alois' skin and hair smelt warm like amber laced with fresh lemons.

_Nice._

Ciel gave a little growl of pleasure when Alois teased his collarbone with small, nipping motions.

"That tickles," Ciel murmured into the mop of blond hair.

"Everything seems to tickle you," Alois laughed, lifting his face off the earl's neck and chest with a purely cheeky grin that looked nothing like the sly leer he had sported when he was a mortal.

Ciel wondered at the glow on the other's face. Before he could censor what was on his mind, he blurted out: "You're so ridiculously _normal_ now that it's unnerving."

"Normal?" Alois blinked his light-blue eyes.

"Meaning you're not that seriously screwed up boy you used to be. You still act like a dreadful slut, but you're not… _sociopathic_ any more."

"Who's a slut?" Alois demanded with a mock-frown and a mischievous smile at exactly the same time as he groped Ciel between his legs.

"You were _saying_?" Ciel snapped in response.

"I _like_ you, that's all. I've always liked you and loved Claude. I naturally grope the ones I like. And I'm not _sociopathic_ any more now that Claude loves me back."

"Claude _loves_ you?" Ciel dropped his voice to a whisper.

Alois nodded happily.

"I always thought demons had no concept of love. I don't think _I_ do," muttered the earl.

"Maybe we do, maybe we don't, I'm not bothered by the technicalities," the fair-haired devil said breezily. "I only know Claude adores me and cares for me and he's sorry he was harsh when he killed me and he's apologised for being callous when he talked about disposing of my soul. But beyond that, he's glad he murdered me because it ultimately meant I could be here with him."

Ciel thought that sounded _somewhat_ screwed up, but devils would be devils, and that was probably a pretty decent synopsis of a demonic romance. He had to ask, though: "You don't mind it when he seduces mortals, or touches me the way he did during our play date?"

"_You're_ special to both of us," Alois said with a kiss. "We've always been absurdly fond of you. I'm not jealous of you. As for mortals, they purely mean business and food. I like watching him with his human lovers. He's much more careful about who I bed, and that's another reason I know he loves me."

They heard Claude enter the bedroom, and they nestled deeper under the covers, stifling their chuckles as the one they were discussing approached the bed. Ciel felt the mattress dip when the older demon sat down, and he had a moment's apprehension that this was going to be the start of some brand of Faustian or Trancy-esque weirdness, perhaps with Claude groping both him and Alois all night, one with each hand. He braced himself to have to murmur vague excuses if Claude went too far, headbutt him if necessary, yell for Hannah if nothing else worked, and acquire another good excuse for fleeing hell.

But Claude only peeled the bedcovers back to kiss Alois passionately, before caressing Ciel's face.

"I want you to think of this as your home," Claude said to Ciel as Alois burrowed under his lover's left arm and snuffled his night shirt. "I hope those words do not bring back bad memories of when you were a child, when I tried to deceive you. I was behaving then as a predator aiming to steal a perfect meal. But you are no longer food, and I only want you to be safe and comfortable."

Ciel saw that he had removed his spectacles and put them on the nightstand. He found the devil's golden eyes soft and honest. He would not call it a gentle or kind gaze, for gentleness and kindness did not always sit well with the nature of demons, but this was close.

"So you're not going to molest me?" Ciel asked cautiously.

"Would you like me to?" Claude inquired very seriously, sounding perfectly ready to molest Ciel as much as he required.

"I think it can wait," Ciel answered quickly.

"Of course it can," said Claude. "You should first process what occurred between you and Michaelis. I am surprised that relations have deteriorated so between the two of you. When you were a human boy, he always looked at you with such tenderness."

"Well, I'm not human any more, that's the trouble."

"Don't say that. It should be a good thing that you're not human any more. If Sebastian doesn't appreciate that, he's a dickhead," Alois stated bluntly, before unbuttoning Claude's shirt and drawing a murmur of pleasure from the gold-eyed devil as he lapped seductively at the smooth skin over his chest.

Unexpectedly, Ciel felt envious of how easily and naturally Claude and Alois enjoyed each other. Acting on his feelings and bidden by a smile from Alois, he crept into the crook of Claude's right arm, reached up, and tentatively kissed the older devil on the mouth. Claude kissed him back, and in that kiss, Ciel tasted interest, protectiveness and... _affection_. The very same fondness in Alois' advances was what had caused Ciel to tell Sebastian that Alois was a better kisser than him.

That was what he had been missing from Sebastian.

As he melted into Claude's kiss, Ciel acknowledged that while Sebastian was technically more proficient than either of these two devils, he had been missing that vital affection when he had kissed and touched him.

Yes, Alois was still an incorrigible tart, and Claude would forever and always be a rather creepy spider demon. But they had died and come back together, and were _happy_ with each other. On top of that, they actually _liked_ him. When they touched him, they conveyed their absolute appreciation of who and what he was, every bit of him. In contrast, Sebastian had never wanted him as a demon. When at last he had taken a more intimate interest in him, his kisses had conveyed lust and desire, but no passion for him just the way he was.

In Ciel's book, that simply made Sebastian the worst kisser and most unwelcome lover possible.

_Miserable bastard._


	5. Gaining Entry

**Note:** Lemony things and blunt language ahead.

* * *

><p><strong>Gaining Entry<strong>

Sebastian had changed his mind about sending the box holding some of Ciel's clothes to Faustus' house. If he did that, it would give the impression that he had accepted how things were. He did not want Ciel or that artificial family of devils to think he was giving his blessing to this arrangement. No, he wanted Ciel back in the mansion with him.

So he took a walk – without the box – and arrived at the Faustus-Trancy-Annafellows-Macken establishment. This was his first visit, and he found the house surprisingly respectable looking, as demon abodes went. It was not as large or impressive as his mansion, but it was sizeable enough, built out of white granite and rose-veined marble, all of it obviously competently put together with solid magical spells.

He rapped on the brass-fronted door.

Claude opened it almost immediately and glared stonily at him.

"I want to see my young master," Sebastian said commandingly. He could _scent_ Ciel's tempting aroma right there, only a room or two away, where the giggles and play-growls that reached his ears suggested that Ciel, the Trancy tart and Lhasa Apso The Younger were romping around and having a blast.

Claude looked him up and down, said "No" in the most uninterested manner, and shut the door in his face.

Sebastian seethed, but devils did not go about breaking one another's doors down in hell. It simply wasn't the done thing. So he turned on his heel and stalked away, fangs bared and eyes glowing all the way home.

The snarl faded once he was alone in his mansion, where the only sensible thing he could do was to go upstairs to Ciel's room, drop face-down onto the youngster's bed, and bury his face in his pillows for a deep, long sniff of the deliciousness that was his little master and ward. The fading scent of the one he had had in his life for ninety-seven years as a devil, and before that for almost four years as a human, nudged him to change his mind fast about his initial decision regarding the clothes.

So the next day, he paid another visit, this time with the box.

"These are some things His Lordship may need," he announced stiffly at the door, holding out the box.

"You may come in for five minutes," said Claude, taking the box from him.

Sebastian was allowed to enter and sit down in the parlour where Ciel and Alois were. He watched Ciel open the box to find some of his most colourful garments in it, and saw the blue-red eyes brighten as he took the clothes out one by one.

"I hope that will be more than enough clothing for your stay here," Sebastian spoke.

"It will do for a start," Ciel replied carefully.

"I expect you home in three days. I believe those clothes will suffice for that period of time. You have fallen far behind already in your study of demon languages–"

The earl's eyes darkened again, and he interrupted his elder, saying coldly: "I'm staying longer than that. I'll need more clothes."

"You will stay no longer than three days. I expect you–"

"Your five minutes are up," Claude announced, glancing at a fob watch of positively ancient appearance.

To the visitor's annoyance, Claude looked very much the way Sebastian often had in the past, when he used to check constantly that everything in the Phantomhive manor was running on schedule.

"You must leave now," Claude said officiously.

_Bloody spider._

Sebastian rose, said goodbye to Ciel, ignored Alois, Luka and Hannah, and strode out of the house. Again, he had to return home empty-handed and crawl into Ciel's bed to bury his face in the pillows.

Had he truly been reduced to this? Pillow-sniffing?

With a huff, he pried himself away from the bed and moved around Ciel's bedroom, opening the wardrobe, the cabinet and the desk drawers. He took out the tackiest things that remained of Ciel's clothes and accessories, spread them out on the bed, and stared hard at them.

_What did the brat want?_

Remaining utterly baffled after five whole minutes of staring at the fashionable objects, Sebastian acted in desperation. He tugged off his shiny, knee-high, stiletto boots with their upward-curving, pointy tips, sat down on the edge of the mattress, and pulled on a pair of Ciel's rainbow socks. They were an uncomfortably tight fit for him, but he managed to get them on without destroying them. He stared at his feet. His poor, abused, rainbow-sock-smothered feet.

He didn't get it.

He lay back on the bed and stuck his feet in the air, still staring at the socks.

Nothing. Still no epiphany was dawning on him.

He had not sent over to Ciel the pair of bedroom slippers with the doggy features and waggling ears, so he stuck them onto his toes and waved his feet in the air again, examining how the rainbow socks went with the beastly slippers.

Still nothing.

It was hopeless. He would never understand why Ciel had developed a taste for these tasteless things.

But suddenly, as the doggy ears waggled and the socks felt like they were burning lurid holes in his eyeballs, an epiphany struck. It wasn't the specific epiphany of knowledge he wanted, but it was a revelation nonetheless, and he sat up as the realisation hit him.

He didn't have to understand Ciel; he only needed to accept him as he was.

…

Sebastian did not mind people staring at him. He was accustomed to being gawked at by humans. People always stared at him when he was in the mortal world, as his otherworldly beauty, animal elegance and impeccably proportioned height made him stand out in a crowd even in an age pervaded by beautiful, larger-than-life celebrities.

He did not mind being the centre of attention in this small and slightly gaudy but certainly upmarket shop selling cashmere and fine wool items in Knightsbridge.

What he _did_ mind was having to actually _shop_ in public for jumpers, scarves, socks and gloves that he thought Ciel would like. These things he was examining were not his style at all, and being seen handling such silly looking objects was ruining his haute couture image. He could have used magic to conjure up all the items he needed, but Ciel was sharp when it came to such things – he could always tell when something had been magicked up, and when it had been properly obtained from the mortal world.

He was determined to please the brat this time, so he ignored the admiring and curious looks, selected the cutest things in the finest quality wool they came in, paid up, and left. This particular shop had no jumpers that he thought would appeal to Ciel, and he had already checked Harrods and Harvey Nichols and found nothing to his satisfaction.

So he turned to Regent Street, and headed for Liberty's. In the children's section, he at last found something to his satisfaction – a Fair Isle-style white lambswool jumper with tasteful, yet cheerful patterning in different shades of blue, with a touch of emerald and a scattering of cherry-red hearts, bordered by adorable little blue ducks with white rings round their necks.

"That's the _cutest_ design we have," cooed the salesperson who had just approached him to see if he needed any help. "Are you looking for something for your son?"

Sebastian was momentarily taken aback. His insides – all the way from his brain down to his guts – churned at the very idea of Ciel as his _son_. He was about to say "no" while in the same moment contemplating a claim that he was shopping for his "brother" or "nephew", but everything in him objected just as violently to such terms of description for the youngster who occupied a unique place in his life. He thought of saying "my little friend" instead, but quickly realised that it might hint strongly of paedophilia to the friendly woman standing before him.

What he _really_ wanted to spew out was: "I'm shopping for my former master-turned-demon-ward who used to have excellent taste but has now been transformed into a tacky brat whom I'm doing every damn thing in my power to seduce."

Knowing what he knew of British mortals, however, Sebastian was fully aware that such a statement would have the salesperson screaming for the police at once. That would attract a great deal of unnecessary attention. So he shushed all the protests within him and said with his very best, smoothest, friendliest and most normal human voice: "I'm looking for a present for my godson. His birthday is coming soon."

_Six months was "soon", wasn't it?_

"Ohhh, that's so sweet!" exclaimed the salesperson warmly. "How old is he?"

"Almost fourteen."

"Then that size you're holding would be too small for him. That's more for eleven to twelve-year-olds."

"No, it's just the right size," Sebastian put on his most picture-perfect smile. "He's small for his age."

_Very small, considering he's a hundred and eleven._

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. This would fit him to a T."

"Well, if you're sure, I'll wrap it in gift paper for you."

"That would be wonderful."

"This way, please."

…

When Sebastian turned up at Claude's house this time, arms full of parcels, Hannah was just reaching the front door too after taking a walk with Luka. She nodded in acknowledgement of his presence, and admitted him to the house. As he stepped into the light-coloured, marble-clad passageway which opened into the spacious living room, he was treated to the unwelcome view of Ciel perched on Claude's lap, playing a game of snakes and ladders with Alois.

To Sebastian's even greater displeasure, Claude was brushing the back of Ciel's neck with his lips, murmuring: "Remember: once a human woman allows you to kiss her neck lavishly, she is very likely to permit you to go all the way with her. With human men who would be attracted to boys of the age that you appear to be, you hardly even need to be this cautious in your approach – though you may reel them in better if you play at being innocent."

"But Ciel _is_ hopelessly innocent even after all these years as a demon," Alois laughed. "He doesn't need to pre–"

Alois broke off when Hannah and Sebastian stepped into the living room proper. Ciel's eyebrows arched at the sight of his once-butler and guardian laden down with gift-wrapped parcels and smart carrier bags from the best shops in London.

"Young Master," Sebastian spoke in greeting. "I've brought you some presents."

"Presents?" Ciel repeated in surprise.

Sebastian had never bought him presents before. Ever. He had _supplied_ him with garments and shelter, food and skills, but nothing had ever been given as a personal gift.

"I bought them in London," said Sebastian. "I hope you will like them."

Curious, Ciel slipped off Claude's lap as Sebastian walked up to the low table the snakes and ladders board game was on to set the parcels and bags down on the unoccupied half of the glass surface. He nodded to Ciel to say that he could open them, and the younger devil stepped forward. The earl opened the bag from the cashmere shop first. His eyes widened at the sight of the alternating rows of baby-blue, white and pastel green that made up the scarf, gloves and socks.

"These are... nice," the earl remarked.

He then unwrapped and opened a box which proved to hold one of the newest models of portable compact disc players, along with a selection of popular music albums in CD format. Sebastian had only grudgingly permitted Ciel some cassette tapes in hell, and a few vinyl records in the town house, but he had been holding off from allowing the younger devil to move on to newer music technology – until now.

Ciel's eyes brightened considerably as the realisation of what he was holding in his hands sank in, and he flipped quickly through the jewel cases holding albums from Wham!, Yazoo, The Smiths, The Police and even a cheesy Abba compilation. Sebastian, whose tastes in human music (when he favoured any at all) ran along the lines of Satie, Rachmaninov and some of Tchaikovsky's works, had felt incredibly stupid choosing and buying these pop albums. But he had guessed that Ciel would like them, and had thus gone ahead with their purchase, together with the player.

"These are great," Ciel said, looking properly into Sebastian's face for the first time since he had stepped into the living room.

There were fresh summer fruits in another bag, and a fashionable pair of sneakers too, in a shoebox tied with a silver ribbon. Then out came the cute jumper from Liberty's, and Ciel actually smiled when he saw the row of ducks and the bright blue colours. Cardigans and jumpers, scarves and gloves had long been a particular point of contention between the two of them. Sebastian had mocked Ciel's love for wearing them, considering that hell was not by any means a cold place. But Ciel liked these snuggly things, as well as his duvets and bedsocks, and wore them whenever he could. That Sebastian would buy him a new jumper, the scarf, gloves and socks – cute ones to boot – was really something.

"All these things are really for me?" he asked.

"Yes, my lord. They are for you. You can keep them as long as you like, and use them whenever and wherever you like. I would be pleased to see you using them all at home – if you would be willing to return. I won't compel you to, but I would be very happy if you would."

"This all looks very impressive, Michaelis," Claude spoke up. "But a few presents and a superficial change of heart does not necessarily make you the best guardian for Ciel."

"Your opinion does not count here, Faustus," Sebastian replied. "The young master should choose for himself."

"That's one of the things I'm talking about," Claude snapped. "You with your 'young master' this and 'my lord' that – ninety-seven years together as fellow devils and you still don't call him 'Ciel'?"

"It is a mark of respect for his rank and our former associa–"

"Oh, spare the drivel, Michaelis. It is a mark of detachment, if you ask me."

"I do _not_ ask you. I only care for the young master's opinion and decision."

"He's been so sheltered in all the wrong ways thanks to your foolish approach to raising a ward that he hasn't seen enough of life amongst other devils to make an informed decision about whether living with you would be best choice he could make."

"I suppose you imagine that living with you and the Lhasa Apso would be the best choice he could make?" Sebastian remarked caustically, pointing his chin towards Alois as he spoke the name of the breed.

"Hey!" Alois spluttered indignantly.

"You will not call my ward and lover a dog," Claude hissed. "And yes, I believe that living with us would be the best choice Ciel could make."

"I disagree."

"Let us settle it the old-fashioned way," Claude growled.

"Fine."

"Do _not_ wreck the house," Hannah warned in a voice whose sweet gentleness made the warning tone it contained even more striking. "Outside, both of you. _Now_."

The two mature male demons needed no further invitation. Even as Hannah shoved them out the back door into the large rock garden behind the house, Sebastian flew at Claude, and Claude engaged him head-on. There was no cutlery weaponry this time, unlike the past occasions on which they had clashed. But there were flashing black claws, glowing eyes, bared fangs, feathers flying like daggers, and lines of spider silk thrown out soft as thread but as lethal as cutting wire.

Hannah held the three youngsters back in the house for their own safety, but allowed them to watch wide-eyed through the bay window after she reinforced the strength of the glass with one of her spells.

Up and down the rock garden they flew, onyx claws slashing flames into life on the boulders as they struck at and dodged each other. Both had shed their human clothing and summoned their demon attire onto their forms. Their black, glossy silhouettes clashed, merged, tore apart and clashed again. Sebastian's straight, pointed, ornamented heels stabbed at Claude, who lashed back with his equally sharp but zig-zagged stilettos, twirling and darting so swiftly that the four other devils watching them found it hard to keep track of half the movements.

Claude was the first to get a proper grip on his opponent. He seized a leaping Sebastian by the left ankle and hurled him into a bank of boulders, which crumbled and fell around him. But Sebastian was nimble enough to fly clear of the falling rocks and surprise Claude with the swiftness of his re-emergence. He got in a good blow to Claude's face before they grappled at close quarters again, wrestling in silent, determined fury, shoving each other hard against another wall of stone, taking turns to grasp the upper hand.

Sebastian had a slight edge over Claude, not having been marginally weakened by dying and then having to come back again fifty years ago. He drove Claude's back violently into the wall, banging his spine and the back of his head hard against the shaped, chiselled stones. Keeping his rival in place with a hand on his throat, Sebastian leaned close to him to growl: "Do you yield your right to my ward?"

Claude's face, nearly always utterly impassive in its expression, seemed to flicker with a strange look of mysterious amusement before he did something that took Sebastian completely by surprise. Ignoring the other's iron grip on his throat, he pushed forward forcefully, practically dislocating his neck in order to close the three inches of space between their faces and press his lips hard to Sebastian's mouth.

Sebastian's eyes widened in astonishment, and he moved to shove Claude away, only to have Claude swing him around and slam him into the stone wall instead. Devils being devils, a dislocated neck was nothing much to Claude, who cracked the bones back into place and moved in on Sebastian.

Ciel's and Alois' jaws dropped as Claude pinned Sebastian's back to the wall, and crushed his mouth to his in a demanding kiss. A furious Sebastian, eyes like red-hot embers, snarled, spat and punched Claude away. But before he could regroup and launch himself furiously at the spider demon to show just how ready he was to kill him, Claude huffed mockingly: "Come on, Michaelis, put some effort into the intimacy. If that's at all representative of the half-baked kisses you've been giving Ciel, small wonder that he prefers _mine_."

"_What?_" Sebastian hissed dangerously.

"Until you prove to me that you know how to kiss and fuck properly, I'm not voluntarily releasing Ciel to you, and I will strongly advise him not to return to you of his own free will either."

"Your impertinence is astounding," Sebastian declared, still trying to manage the feat of spitting out the taste of Claude without looking too inelegant. "Who are you to suggest that I would be at all lacking in those respects?"

"Who am I?" Claude scoffed, removing his spectacles, his gold eyes gleaming coldly at his rival. "I am one who has pleased and satisfied Ciel in all that we have done, whereas you, I believe, has been found by him to be most wanting and highly unappealing. So come on, show me what you're made of. Then Ciel and I will decide if you are fit to be his mentor and teacher."

"You disgust me," Sebastian growled.

"No more than _you_ disgust _him_," Claude returned cruelly.

"Fuck you, Faustus," Sebastian snarled, a mere half-second before he swept forward, grasped Claude's head firmly in his hands, and trapped him in an absolutely vicious kiss, one that would have had the other clawing desperately for breath had he not been a demon himself.

Ciel's and Alois' jaws dropped a little lower, and their blue eyes almost popped out of their heads, Luka, on the other hand, groaned in disappointment because the spectacular fighting had stopped. Hannah, for her part, wondered what she should hunt for Luka's dinner while Sebastian gave the kiss his all, and Claude took all he had to give – lips, tongue, fangs, and passionate hatred – stumbling backwards as Sebastian pressed forward.

Still locked in that peculiarly aggressive intimate contact, they stumbled over the pile of fallen rocks on the ground, whereupon they broke their kiss, and Sebastian socked Claude so hard in the jaw that the spider demon began to bleed profusely from the mouth and cheek. He staggered back – but even as he reeled from the pain, stunned, he formed a mocking smile on his face.

"Let's see what else you've got, Michaelis," Claude sneered, ignoring the blood crawling down his face. "That kiss was passable, but maybe it's taken everything out of you. Show me that it hasn't."

"Clau–" Alois started to call out in alarm, only to have Hannah put a quick but gentle finger to his lips.

"Alois, they're settling things the _traditional_ way," the demoness said softly. "Let them finish what they started. This has nothing to do with the genuine commitment between you and Claude, or between Ciel and Sebastian."

Alois was reassured, but Ciel protested: "Sebastian and I don't _have_ genuine commitment. We don't like each other. He doesn't want me. We just..."

He trailed off, because for one thing, he wasn't really sure of the truth of what he wanted to say. For another, the show out there in the rock garden was getting really interesting.

Sebastian shoved Claude down onto the rubble before shredding the spider demon's leather gear and tearing open his own. He roughly turned his opponent face-down over the fallen rocks, kept him pressed down with a firm hand on the back of his neck, and positioned himself between his legs.

"I don't think you have it in you, Michaelis," Claude laughed.

For answer, Sebastian tightened his grip around his neck before lifting his head a couple of inches off the rocks and slamming his face back down into the rubble. Then without further foreplay, he thrust deep into Claude from his very first stroke.

Claude snarled and grunted from the suddenness of it, and Sebastian hissed as he drove his second thrust home: "Well, now you have it _in you_, Faustus."

"I've had better, Michaelis," Claude taunted. "And I _do_ better. Alois screams with pleasure from the very moment I enter him."

Behind the window glass, Alois blushed with pride. "I _do_," he said smugly to Ciel.

Ciel blushed too, but from embarrassment at the devilish openness of all this going on before and beside him. Alois found that blush so adorable that he kissed Ciel on the cheek at once, further deepening the flush.

"If you're going to set such low standards by pounding impressionable young _lapdogs_, you won't even recognise _quality_ when it penetrates you," Sebastian grunted, thrusting deeper into his rival.

"Hey!" Alois snapped angrily again, though once more, he was completely ignored by Sebastian.

Claude gasped from the escalating sensations Sebastian was forcing onto and into him, but mustered enough breath to retort: "You're not bad when you put a bit of elbow grease into it – any more to spare, or are you going soft already?"

Sebastian bared his fangs in a cold smile as he aimed for and struck that special spot inside male demons – that which was too delicate in human males to be continuously banged, but which was resilient enough in devils to take a good deal of punishment for the greatest pleasure.

Claude bellowed as his rival hit the target. Again. And once again, until he was roaring into the rubble, fingers and claws tightening in ecstacy over the stones beneath them until they were shredded into pebbles.

"Am I putting enough back into it now?" Sebastian snarled, not letting up at all.

"It's an improvement, you bastard... aaaahhhhhhhh..." the spider demon moaned, golden eyes flying open before falling languidly shut, face pressed hard against the sharp granite.

Over and over again Sebastian pushed into him, and over and over again Claude panted and groaned, until the devil underneath climaxed from the terrific pleasure of the assault, and the one on top came just as violently from knowing he had conquered his foe.

For several seconds, they remained as they were, Claude savouring the delightful pain, and Sebastian recovering from his exertions while keeping his rival in place. Then they peeled apart, each demon getting back onto his sharp-heeled feet with only the slightest hint of unsteadiness. Their glossy attire, ripped and torn, reformed anew over their bodies until there was no sign that it had ever been damaged. Their wounds closed up, and the spilt blood was reabsorbed through their skin.

"Well, how was it for you, Faustus?" Sebastian asked with sardonic iciness.

"A fair performance from you, Michaelis. I'll give you a passing grade."

Sebastian half-huffed and half-growled.

"I suppose it wasn't too bad, all things considered," Claude remarked coolly. "Very well, if Ciel is willing to go home with you – and only if he is truly willing – I yield my claim to him."

Sebastian turned his head to look at Ciel, who was still blushing behind the glass from the exhibition he had been treated to, and from Alois' kiss. His enormous blue-scarlet eyes were hard to read beyond the surface embarrassment, but Sebastian thought that for the first time since the brat had become a devil, he was looking at him, his guardian, with a modicum of real interest and personal curiosity.

He looked so beautiful there, framed by the window, that Sebastian knew he had to take him home. More pertinently, he suddenly knew how much he had missed having him around, as much trouble as he might be.

Claude was already back in the house and lifting Alois into his arms even while Sebastian was still out there in the rock garden appreciating Ciel's beauty, and the Trancy tart was already gushing at his lover: "We've got to try _that_ tonight..."

Hannah smiled reassuringly at Ciel and rested her hands on his shoulders as Sebastian walked indoors and approached him.

"Only if you _want_ to go with him," she was saying kindly. "You always have a home here, so you will not be unprotected or unwanted even if you prefer not to return to your guardian."

Unexpectedly, Sebastian discovered that he did not feel resentful of Hannah. In fact, he was pleased that she was giving Ciel that sense of security, because he now understood how much he wanted to know for certain that the youngster genuinely wished to live with him.

Ciel studied Sebastian carefully and saw that the one who had been so much a part of his existence – both human and demon – for a century was looking at him now in a way he never had before. The superciliousness and insufferable superiority were gone, though the pride remained. In place of the annoying arrogance was an openness that suggested he was ready to meet Ciel halfway in the areas that mattered, and to explore a variety of _other_ areas with him.

The young devil took a deep breath for steadiness and clarity, cocked his head a little to one side, and murmured: "I suppose..."

The three grown devils held their own breaths as they waited to hear what else he would follow that beginning with.

"I suppose I could live at home for a week and see how it goes."

Sebastian exhaled smoothly in relief that the little one was coming home, and that he was looking at him out of those beautiful eyes which still held that hint of mild inquiry. Would he be curious enough to venture into bed with him? Would he be amenable to a bit more petting and stroking first?

He even looked a little _hungry_. That was promising. Maybe he could propose some "play time" in the bathtub...

"You _do_ have tiramisu waiting for me in the magic cooling box, don't you?" Ciel asked.

Sebastian heaved an inward sigh as the hint of hunger in the youngster's eyes was so unkindly accounted for.

It looked like "play time" would have to wait a tad longer.

* * *

><p><strong>Note:<strong> The spellings of the characters' names here are taken from the Square Enix publications, Black Tabloid and Final Record.


	6. Rainbows And Cheese

**Warning (which I forgot to put up earlier, sorry): **Citrusy, lemony and suchlike stuff ahead. Cheese too, of course.

* * *

><p><strong>Rainbows And Cheese<strong>

"You're such a slut," Alois drawled, crawling between Claude's legs, over his crotch and abdomen and right up his chest as he climbed into bed with him that night. "You were dying to be fucked by Sebastian, weren't you?"

"Quite the opposite. I was attempting to fuck him," Claude replied complacently, enjoying the feeling of his little lover making his way up his body.

"But getting fucked by him was your other aim, if the first failed, wasn't it?" Alois asked, licking the spider demon's chin.

"Hmm."

"You _are_ a slut."

"Says the one more commonly associated with that label by his enemies," Claude said affectionately.

"Takes one to live with one for fifty years."

"Touche."

"So he was pretty damn good after all, huh?" Alois pouted.

Claude, poised between answering with the bare technical facts and fudging those facts a little for the sake of a deeper truth, came down on the side of the latter as he answered: "No one's as good as you in my book."

"Mmm... a slut with a smooth tongue," Alois purred, kissing Claude and preparing for an inventive session in bed, leaving him with only half a thought to spare for whether Ciel was getting on any better with Sebastian now.

...

In the other room, Luka burrowed into Hannah's breasts and asked sleepily: "D'you think Ciel is going to be happy now, Hannah?"

"I think he is, Luka," she smiled.

"And d'you think Sebastian's happy to be stuck with Ciel now?"

"I believe he's chuffed to bits about it."

"You did a good thing, sticking them together," the little one laughed merrily.

"It seems that I did."

...

"What are we supposed to be doing again?" Ciel asked doubtfully, as Sebastian dipped the silver fork back into the hellishly divine tiramisu.

He was seated on Sebastian's lap, while Sebastian was seated in his armchair, and the older devil was feeding him dessert.

"We're bonding, of course," his guardian answered, lifting the layers of cream-cheese goodness to Ciel's lips.

Ciel opened his mouth, accepted what was offered, and revelled in the taste of it for a good minute before he asked his next question: "So... why haven't we bonded before?"

"We've been wishing we were rid of each other for ninety-seven years. Why would we bond when we were each hoping the other would vaporise into the smoky ether of hell?"

Another spoonful was lifted to Ciel's lips to be consumed with the greatest appreciation.

"You _do_ know I can feel your hard-on, don't you?" Ciel asked in a perfectly off-handed manner, licking the spoon quickly before Sebastian could lower it again.

"Does it bother you?" Sebastian asked.

"Should it?"

"That depends on what you might be expecting from it," the older one said.

"I don't know that I'm expecting anything from it."

"Oh," Sebastian sounded deflated. "You weren't impressed by my demonstration of dominance over Claude?"

"You were just showing off."

"I was proving that I was qualified to be your guardian and teacher, despite your reluctance to give me any credit."

"Your qualifications are fine," Ciel sighed. "I just didn't like anything you did to me before, because..."

"Because...?"

Colouring a little, Ciel continued: "Because you didn't taste like you really liked me. Something was missing."

"I like you now," Sebastian assured him, feeding him the last forkful of tiramisu.

"I can tell," Ciel said after swallowing the mouthful of moist dessert. He then lay back against the armrest of the chair, stretching his legs over the other armrest, leaving his bottom planted on Sebastian's lap, and feeling very aware of the erection throbbing against his right hip.

"How can you tell?" Sebastian asked, putting the dessert plate down on the little table beside his armchair.

"By the fact that you have a raging hard-on even when I'm all togged out like this," Ciel answered, waving his colourful sock-ensconced feet in the air and looking down at the baby-pink T-shirt he was wearing – one with a saccharine illustrated image of a goofy spaniel-type dog licking the face of a dewy-eyed boy with an oversized head. "I would've thought my being dressed in garb of this sort would make you wilt for sure."

"It's what's inside that matters, isn't it?" Sebastian said, rather cheesily.

Ciel snorted. "I can't believe you said that with a straight face. You must have been watching too many advertisements on telly."

"I've been trying to take an interest in the things that interest you."

"I don't know if I should be pleased or concerned about that."

"Try being pleased with something I do for once this century," suggested the older devil, as he reached out for Ciel's left hand so he could examine the green plastic wristwatch with an illustration of a red crab on the dial, its pincers forming the hour and minute hands. The strap was decorated with cartoon seashells. "When did you buy this?"

"A few months ago. Do you like it?"

"I cannot say that I do for its own sake. However, if you like it, then I am happy that you are wearing it."

"To put that in normal English, it's the tackiest thing you've ever seen on me." Blue-red eyes glinted keenly.

"No, the tackiest thing I've ever seen on you was the Mickey Mouse cap with the ears."

"Ah. That."

"So tell me what you were thinking when you purchased this wristwatch."

"Uhm... I was thinking it looked cute, and I knew you would hate it, so that was a really good reason for buying it."

Sebastian studied his face curiously. "My hating it was a really good reason for buying it? Why would that be so?"

"Because I wanted to annoy you."

"What would annoying me achieve?" the older one asked.

"I wanted you to know that I wasn't happy."

Sebastian could feel that they were getting somewhere close to the root of the youngster's odd behaviour now. Containing his wild curiosity, he asked calmly: "What were you unhappy about?"

"The way things were."

"What, specifically, about the way things were?"

"You were keeping everything the same – dull and boring – as if you were trying to keep me the way I was when I was someone you wanted to have. Whereas I was trying to change myself, because I wanted to express that I was someone different now, and if you didn't like that, then it was too bad, because I was going to make damn sure you were going to have to put up with what you didn't like in the loudest, brightest, most colourful ways I could manage."

As Ciel spoke those thoughts from the deepest chambers of his mind, he too was experiencing a revelation of sorts, for he had never described his behaviour even to himself with such clarity.

"Well," Sebastian observed thoughtfully. "I now accept you as you are – in every way imaginable."

"Yes, I know."

"So can we agree that this wristwatch has done its work for the time being?"

Ciel looked into his garnet eyes, found no deception there, and nodded slowly, cautiously. Sebastian unstrapped the watch and put it on the side table.

"Now what about this T-shirt with the… charming… design?" the elder one inquired, one black fingernail tracing the slightly plasticky outline of the boy-and-dog graphic.

"The image reminded me of me with Sebastian the dog, so I really wanted it," Ciel said. "I also thought it would say to you that I'd not only changed into someone different from who you knew me as, but that I was ready to rediscover who I was from before we first met."

"I accept you as you are, as you were, and as you were even from before I knew you," Sebastian declared.

"So the T-shirt has done its job."

"It appears so," Sebastian remarked, carefully and skilfully peeling it off Ciel.

"You're good at removing clothes, aren't you?" Ciel observed.

"Hmm. What's the story behind this extremely faded pair of grey jeans?" he asked, tweaking the unevenly coloured fabric.

"They were already deliberately streaked and faded to begin with, but they were comfortable, and they fitted me. Their appearance and fit seemed to say to me that if I wore them, I'd be declaring that I wasn't perfect at all in your eyes any more, but that I didn't give a shit, because I was contented with myself as I had become."

"I see nothing wrong with you at all," Sebastian murmured, fingers already working on the brass button of those jeans.

He slipped the jeans off with a little cooperation from Ciel, and the youngster was now almost naked in his lap, wearing only a pair of cotton boxers with a repeating pattern of ice-cream cones all over them. Sebastian was tempted to analyse the ice-cream cones and move on to whipping off the boxers, but he refrained for the time being and eyed the rainbow socks instead.

"And these?" he asked, reaching out to hold one of Ciel's feet while scrutinising the eye-watering shades of bright yellow, scarlet, emerald, indigo, royal blue, a violet that was more like lavender, and tangerine.

"They're just cute," Ciel said. "I happen to like cute socks. Nothing profound behind that. Of course it always helped to know that you would detest them."

"May I take them off, then?"

"Sure."

Off went the socks, and finally, Sebastian was contemplating the ice-cream boxers. "What about these?" he asked softly.

"Sebastian," Ciel sighed.

"Yes?"

"Stop faffing around with the pseudo-analysis and the psychobabble, and let's see what the hell you're made of – _it's what's inside that counts,_ remember?"

Given the green light, Sebastian wasted no time getting to what was inside those boxers, peeling off that flimsy scrap of underwear, and rotating Ciel about on his lap so that the young one's head was on his guardian's knees, his bottom pressed against Sebastian's belly, his ankles hooked over Sebastian's shoulders.

"Let's see if things go any better this time than they did last time," Ciel proposed, sounding almost businesslike. "If it's no better this time round, I swear I'll go straight back to Claude and come up with a scheme that will end with him fucking you senseless."

"That is not going to happen, _Ciel_," Sebastian growled seductively before hoisting his ward's hips up to the level of his face and suckling the youngster's balls so perfectly that Ciel shut up at once before yielding in a short while to moans of pleasure, offering Sebastian far more enthusiastic _Mmm_-type purrs than he had ever given Alois. By the time Sebastian dipped his chin to press his crafty tongue to Ciel's smooth perineum, the young one was nearly incoherent with bliss.

Now Sebastian was ready to move on to the next phase. Carefully, so as not to jolt the one he was holding, he shifted forward slightly in order to start teasing Ciel's prick with his tongue. Ciel purred away as the pleasure increased, hardly noticing that his head, shoulders and arms had slid over Sebastian's knees, and he was practically hanging upside down, supported only by the older devil's strong hands holding his buttocks and hips. Neither did he notice that his spreading legs were slipping off Sebastian's shoulders and onto the crooks of his arms. He didn't care and scarcely registered the posture he was in, for Sebastian's lips and tongue and mouth were doing incredible things to his cock, sampling the weeping slit, circling the head, wrapping about his shaft. Ciel was already crying out at a moderate volume, awash in the sensations which promised so much more to come. On top of all that, he could literally feel, skin-to-skin, the affection and possessiveness communicating itself from every pore, every move and every sound from the devil who grasped him with his hands and mouth – and that made it all _so_ good.

Then Sebastian's head began to move up and down, and Ciel clutched at the long thighs beneath the slope of his body, digging into the glossy fabric with his little black claws. Sebastian hummed softly around his ward's cock as the small nails pressed through the black leather and into his flesh – he liked the tiny pinpricks of pain he was getting from them. At the same time, his low hum sent intriguing vibrations through Ciel's shaft, causing him to moan louder and dig in harder as he pushed his hips upward to get as much of himself into the other's mouth as he could.

"My, aren't we eager?" Sebastian teased, stopping what he was doing and letting Ciel slip out past his lips. "Looks like you've shed a lot of your inhibitions since you went to stay with the spider and his pet Lhasa Apso. I should send you to them for sleepovers once in a while."

Ciel, suddenly finding himself bereft of the heat of that delicious mouth, lifted his head and neck to growl in frustration: "Stop talking and get on with it!"

"Hmm," Sebastian murmured mischievously. "I think we should have a bit more fun if we try it _this_ way…"

So saying, he flipped Ciel over as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do, drawing a startled yelp from the smaller demon. Ciel was now face-down over his lap, his thighs parted on either side of Sebastian's own, feet bumping up against the back of the armchair. He growled at the unexpected change of position, pressed his hands to the floor, and tried to whip his head around to glare at his one-time butler.

"What's the meaning of th–" he began, only to cut his speech off when Sebastian shifted forward in the chair while simultaneously easing him down along his lap, until his upper body was resting chest-down against the older devil's shins. "Hey, what are you doing…?"

He gasped, and then inhaled sharply when Sebastian swiftly and very nimbly caught his saliva-coated prick right between his knees and held it there.

"Aaaaaa… Sebastian…" Ciel hissed nervously. "What the hell…?"

"Behave now, or I'll squeeze my knees together."

"Don't you dare, you bastard – don't you fucking dare… ah-h-h-"

Those wicked knees gripped his cock a little more tightly, and Ciel's breath issued forth in a stutter. He couldn't remove himself from the lap now that he was effectively trapped by one small but very sensitive part of his anatomy. As he considered his limited options, his sputtering plume of breath hitched sharply when he felt Sebastian prying into the crevice of his arse with the fingers of one hand, while those of the other hand lightly traced lines and circles on his scrotal sac. Those hands had very considerately rounded their usual sharp claws through magic into blunt nails so as not to inflict unnecessary harm on him.

The older demon had slicked the fingers of his prying hand with some moisture – whether it was saliva or some other diabolical substance Ciel had no idea, and he didn't care once the hand caressing his balls sent him into a tizzy with its gentle manipulations, and the tip of another finger pressed up against the tight opening between his nether cheeks, circling it with the clear intent of exploring further. His immediate instinct was to pull away as he had not gone quite so far even with Alois, but drawing away by pushing his hips into Sebastian's knees also meant that he was thrusting his prick between the pair of leather-clad joints that held him so snugly…

Damn, but that felt _good_.

Sebastian's probing finger, however, had followed his butt forward, and now that he wanted to pull back so as to thrust his cock forward again between those amazing knees, he found that he would be pushing himself back _onto_ the finger.

Damn, damn, damn.

Gingerly, he inched back a fraction, easing his body over the very tip of Sebastian's extended finger, blushing as he did so. It was only a quarter-inch or so, hardly anything to fuss over, but the finger moved with him as he thrust forward, so that when he moved back again, he had to take in a little more of it. Perhaps if he'd still been human, he would have felt discomfort or even pain; but as a young devil, he had a resilient and extremely responsive body, and this was starting to feel pretty interesting.

"Do you like this?" Sebastian murmured, enjoying the view immensely.

"Mmm… you're not half-bad," Ciel muttered breathlessly.

Sebastian left off fondling his balls and smacked him once on the bottom, telling him: "No Faustus-style bullshit from you, now. I'm good at this and you know it."

"Ow!" Ciel protested uselessly against the single spank.

Sebastian slicked up another finger and introduced the double-tipped thickness to Ciel, who groaned with pleasure and mild tension as the sleek digits entered about an inch at the same time as he thrust forward. He was obliged to take in about an inch-and-a-half of them when he pushed back, and soon they had a good rhythm going, Ciel pounding the narrow gap between Sebastian's knees while working his nether orifice in and out over his fingers, and crying out as he shifted in each direction.

"You're almost there, Ciel," Sebastian whispered, feeling himself growing rock-hard as Ciel transferred his left hand from the floor to grip his guardian's left boot, giving himself more leverage and a change of angle. Sebastian took the opportunity to locate and caress the demon equivalent of the prostate gland within his ward, and the effect was instantaneous.

"Hah… ahhhhhhh…!" Ciel gasped, his cries growing frantic and higher in pitch, until he was thrusting at a furious speed, an alteration of pace which was at last capped by the expulsion of seed from his body right onto the floor, splattering over the sides of Sebastian's shiny boots.

He cried out twice more in vague tandem with a brace of slow thrusts between Sebastian's knees, then slumped limply over the older devil's long legs. Sebastian gently withdrew his fingers from him, shifted his knees to release his prick, and lifted Ciel back into a sitting position on his lap.

"That was really bloody good, you sick bastard," Ciel mumbled, tilting forward to rest his head on Sebastian's shoulder.

"I thought so too," came the smug response. "You certainly are less frigid than you used to be – I shall definitely arrange for more stays for you in the spider's household."

"I have a feeling he'd rather have _you_ sleep over now, after that spectacle in the rock garden," Ciel slurred against Sebastian's neck.

"Well, he's not having me," the guardian said with absolute confidence. "But I think it's time for me to have you – properly. While you're right here on my lap."

Ciel drew back and peered down at Sebastian's crotch, which was bulging under the skintight leather.

"You'll have a job doing that, considering what you're wearing."

But Sebastian seemed unperturbed, and Ciel soon understood why when he leaned forward and said to him: "It won't be a problem. I've finally been won over by the all-essential zip fastener."

"No kidding."

"No. It's stitched invisibly into the fabric, but it's right… here."

Sebastian pinched something small between his thumb and forefinger, and a clean zippered line opened, all the way from his throat to between his legs. It released his erect member, which was of rather impressive girth, and Ciel's eyes widened.

"Oh…" the youngster whispered, not taking his eyes off it.

"Will this be a problem for you, Ciel?"

"N-no, I don't think so. But just one thing first, before we carry on..."

"What is it?" Sebastian asked, straining to proceed.

Ciel leaned over the side of the armchair and felt around for something on the floor, muttering: "I just want to see if it'll look any cuter with..."

The next moment, he popped upright again, flourishing one of the rainbow socks.

"...with this."

And without so much as a by-your-leave, Ciel slipped the colourful sock over Sebastian's cock, then sat back to admire the effect.

This time, Sebastian really wilted.

...

Later on in the night, Sebastian stirred in Ciel's bed and wrapped himself even more tightly around his ward, who was sound asleep. This was better than cats. The older devil smiled in contentment as he took a deep breath of the young one's scent – the real thing was here in his bed now, no more need to resort to pillow-sniffing.

His smile broadened when he thought of how his prick had deflated in reaction to its being clothed in rainbow hues. How Ciel had chuckled non-stop at that! Sebastian should have been annoyed, but instead of being angry, he found himself pleased to let him sit naked in his lap and laugh, for genuine laughter from the last Earl of Phantomhive had been a truly rare commodity since they had first met.

After indulging himself thoroughly in mirth at his guardian's expense, Ciel had recovered his composure, save for a hiccup or two, and quite diligently worked with his hands and mouth – as Alois had taught him on a few of the nights they had spent together – to bring Sebastian's wilted member back to full mast.

Then he had wrapped his arms around Sebastian's neck and let him push slowly and carefully into him until he felt completely filled up. After that, light upward thrusts from Sebastian matched by the rhythmic up-and-down motions of Ciel's slender hips had carried Sebastian to a tremendously satisfying climax, made all the better because Ciel, with that fresh round of stimulation, came a half-second later, completing their first real demonic bonding session. The young one had very naturally snuggled against his chest the moment he started feeling sleepy, and there in the armchair, they had napped with their arms wrapped around each other.

Upon waking from his nap, Sebastian had risen to his feet with a sleepy Ciel in his arms and carried him upstairs to his bedchamber. He had thought of taking Ciel to the master bedroom where he himself spent his resting hours, but decided at the last minute that the earl would probably feel more comfortable in his usual sleeping quarters.

So here they were now in the youngster's bedroom, surrounded by the cheerful garments that Ciel had finally dared to bring out of his closet and drawers. Sebastian shook his head in silence, wondering how he had ended up like this, sleeping with a cheeky little devil in a bedchamber littered with tacky clothes and accessories.

Hmm. Everything had to change at some point, didn't it, even for an immortal demon?

He gave the sleeping beauty beside him a kiss on the cheek, upon which it occurred to him that they had teased and petted and fucked, but they hadn't really kissed yet since they had returned together to the mansion earlier that day. It was kissing that had started all the recent trouble between them, and Sebastian wondered if there would be any improvement on that score in Ciel's opinion.

He didn't want to wake him right now, not when he looked so squeezable as he slept. He could wait.

In the meantime, he gazed around at the clothes hanging from every piece of furniture in the room and braced himself for the possibility that Ciel would never alter his weird taste in fashion. Maybe now that he had been accepted for what he was by his guardian, he would revert to his classic yet cutting-edge sartorial sense for which he had been much remarked in society in the Victorian era. Or perhaps he would remain stuck at the teenage phase for some time to come, with all its accompanying tastelessness.

Whatever happened, Sebastian would handle it as graciously as any well-bred devil could. Because _it was what was inside that counted_, even if it came attired in shocking rainbow hues. Speaking of which...

There were some pairs of socks on the table beside the bed, which Ciel had taken out a few hours ago to show to him. One of them was quite like the rainbow pair the earl had been wearing while he was fed his tiramisu in the armchair. Out of sheer curiosity, Sebastian reached out, picked up one half of the pair, and casually slipped it over his flaccid dick.

Now what in hell was so "cute" about that? He asked himself that question with a mental snort, looking at his dressed-up prick this way and that, and still not seeing anything lovable about it. Pricks should be bare when not sheathed by a lover's parts, proudly naked and undraped, glorious in their erect structure–

A most disrespectful guffaw interrupted his thoughts, and he whipped around to find Ciel, quite wide awake, laughing his head off all over again at the sight of his guardian contemplating a rainbow sock over his cock.

"It's entirely your fault, you know," Sebastian grumbled, whipping the sock off and tossing it across the room.

"You just couldn't resist it, could you?" Ciel howled.

"I'm sure you think it's terribly amusing," Sebastian huffed.

"I do," Ciel admitted, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his wrist. "That was a bloody priceless sight."

"If you say so," the older devil growled, pulling the younger one to him.

Ciel, still chuckling, circled Sebastian's neck with his arms again just like he had when they had had sex in the armchair. But this time, he pressed his mouth to Sebastian's, and tasted his lips, his tongue, the powerful scent of him.

"Mmm..." Ciel murmured against him at last, and this time Sebastian was sure the sound wasn't a judgemental "Hmm" in disguise.

The kiss went on for a gratifying length of time, till at last they drew apart, and the younger devil pronounced his verdict: "You're a really good kisser, Sebastian Michaelis."

"Why thank you, Ciel Phantomhive."

"I think I'll continue to take my lessons from you after all."

"I would be honoured to teach you all you want to learn, and more."

"I just wonder..." Ciel began.

"What?" Sebastian asked curiously.

"I wonder how you'll look with those Mickey Mouse ears on your head."

Sebastian blanched.

It would be all right, he told himself. It would all turn out sane and good and tasteful in the end, somehow. It _had_ to. The youngster would grow out of this phase eventually – perhaps in about three hundred years, give or take a century...

-END-

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> This is the point at which I feel this little story comes to a natural end. I shall in all likelihood leave it at this, unless I can think of a compelling reason to have another chapter. So if that doesn't happen, I'd like to thank you for reading it. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kuroshitsuji, naturally.


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